The New Old West Side Story
The Sharks and Jets may have been initially inspired by Shakespeare’s Capulets and Montagues, but the gang members we see are really first cousins of the “troubled youth” in popular[…]
Film Noir, Bête Blanche: Blood on the Snow in Fargo
The horror in this film is not the noir violence that it brings to the bucolic Midwestern setting, but the inability of that violence to leave a mark – the[…]
Comedy · Directors · Eastern European · Romance · Writers & Critics
How Did Hungarians Do It? The Hungarian World of Ernst Lubitsch
Lubitsch biographers and critics have accepted the lore that the Hungarian plays he used for his films were inferior. That widely held perception has come about because Lubitsch’s admirers want[…]
Drama · War · Writers & Critics
Designated Mourner: On Christian Petzold’s Transit
The refugees’ babel is a constant background presence in Seghers’s novel, a kind of Greek chorus commenting on the various ship arrivals and departures, and spreading news of any developments[…]
Actors & Personalities · Pre-Code · Sex & Relationships · Women in Film
Mae West: Pleasure Woman
West is a born outlaw, a queen of the underworld who knows that two and two are four but five will get you 10 if you know how to work[…]
Comedy · DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals · Production History
“Baby, I’m Having Fun”: Allan Arkush and Kent Beyda Discuss Get Crazy
ALLAN ARKUSH: Get Crazy never actually got a real release, you know. It was in theaters for a month. . . . A month? I’m sorry, a week, in some[…]
Billy Wilder’s “Home Run with the Bases Loaded”: Some Keys to The Apartment
In the corporate world the film depicts, the lower-level executives are small-time Lotharios who seek no more than sex from female underlings. Their boss, however, battens on the love he[…]
Comedy · Crime · Drugs · LGBT & Queer · New Media
Post-Irony Film & The Scary of Sixty-First
The Scary of Sixty-First expands the umbrella of “buzzword cinema” — it’s a Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy with a lesbian sex scene by a popular podcaster and it-girl of the edgy[…]
African American · Literature and Film · Women in Film
“And if you can, why wouldn’t you?” Nella Larsen, Netflix, and Passing (2021)
The staying power of Passing in 2021 goes far beyond its ripped-from-the-headlines resonances, however. Larsen’s story endures, on the one hand, for its intricate depiction of female friendship, rivalry, and[…]
Essays · Pandemic · SF & Fantasy · War
Nuclear Realism and Memories of Extinction in the 1980s: Testament, The Day After, and Threads
Excerpted from the author’s new critical study, Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980s: The Bunkered Decades (Oxford University Press, December 2021), with the kind permission of[…]
Activist & Political · Asian · TV & Streaming · War
The Twilight Zone and the Culture Wars, Part 1. Remembering to Forget: History, Memory, and Trumpism in “The Encounter”
This is the first piece of a multi-part, long-form series entitled “The Twilight Zone and the Culture Wars.” The series spotlights several episodes from Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and[…]
Books · Crime · TV & Streaming
Book Review: Shooting Columbo: The Lives and Deaths of TV’s Rumpled Detective
Shooting Columbo: The Lives and Deaths of TV’s Rumpled Detective, by David Koenig. 248pp. Bonaventure Press, 2021. The story of Columbo is the story of Peter Falk. Not Richard Levinson[…]
Anarchism · Franchises & Series · Horror · Mental Illness · Mystery · Theory · Urban Conflict
Framing the Mentally Ill: An Anarchist-Theoretical Understanding of Two “Jokers”
This article aims to demonstrate the ways in which media interests at the levels of cinematic production through to their journalistic reception work to control and marginalize certain progressive ideologies[…]
Directors · Drama · Outsiders · War · Writers & Critics
“Write Some Good Ones”: How Billy Wilder’s Most Autobiographical Film Was Directed by Somebody Else
Rumanian refugee Georges Iscovescu (Charles Boyer) conning a guileless California schoolteacher, Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland, in an Oscar-nominated role), into marrying him so he can enter the United States[…]
Crime · Drama · Production History
The Godfather, Part III: The One Who Inspired It
“Dedicated to Charlie Bluhdorn who inspired it.” * * * Not only is Mario Puzo’s The Godfather the stuff of Hollywood legend, but so is its turbulent production. Even after[…]
Counterculture · Directors · Drama · Interviews · Restorations
My My, Hey Hey, Out of the Blue Is Here to Stay: John Alan Simon and Elizabeth Karr Talk about the Restoration of Dennis Hopper’s Masterpiece
Dennis wasn’t originally hired to direct Out of the Blue, rather he was hired to act in it. After about a week of shooting, the production manager, Paul Lewis, who[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Drama · Silents · Women in Film
An Innocent Lulu: How Pabst Rewrote Wedekind in Pandora’s Box
If she is seen simply as a free spirit, a woman who lives for sexual pleasure, and as exemplary on that account, a model liberated woman (as Louise Brooks herself[…]
Directors · Historical & Epic · Horror · Politics
Five Screenplays by Larry Cohen: Bone, J. Edgar Hoover x2, It’s Alive III, Return to Salem’s Lot
I have been a fan of writer/director Larry Cohen ever since viewing his 1970s classics The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977) and It Lives Again (1978). Cohen was[…]
Horror · Psychology · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming · Women in Film
A Record of Human Matter: John Newland’s One Step Beyond
But that’s not to deny the series’ eerie impact, all the same – starting with the level, assured-past-urgency mortician’s cool of Newland himself and his unnerving, implacable smile. Is it[…]
Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · German Cinema
The Kaiser of California: The Third Reich Goes West
Its release on Blu-ray is in some ways a belated victory for the film, whose unsuccessful release in the United States eighty-five years ago was a disappointment to Trenker and[…]
