Designers · Drama · Interviews
Uncut Gems: Talking with Production Designer Sam Lisenco
We were really careful in coming up with the look of Howard’s world to make assumptions about how old he was when he would’ve formed his taste, and what that[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Interviews · LGBT & Queer
“How Stupid the Whole World Is!” An interview with Paul Morrissey
“There was no movement! I was not part of a movement, I. Made. My. Own. Films. They. Were. Not. Part. Of. Any. Movement. You’re incapable of understanding that, aren’t you? I have to be in a category. First I’m in ‘Andy Warhol films,’ then I’m an ‘independent.’ I like good films that are worth watching, OK?”
Costume Drama · Literature and Film · Women in Film
Greta Gerwig’s Little Women Is Great; It’s Just Not Little Women
Before seeing Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, I knew I’d be in for a more avant-garde adaptation – in interviews, Gerwig has talked openly about wanting to “strip away” the story’s[…]
Directors · Festivals & Awards · Interviews
Women in Film: Interviews with Mati Diop, Marie Kreutzer, Haifaa al-Mansour, and Zoé Wittock at Berlinale, Toronto, and Sundance Film Festivals
Our globe-trotting correspondent Amir Ganjavie spoke with four emerging women directors at the 2019 Berlinale and Toronto International Film Festivals and the 2020 Sundance Festival. Collectively, they represent France (via[…]
Drama · Essays · Urban Conflict
Watching Taxi Driver with John Hinckley
Our nation has persisted in this state for so long that when we watch Taxi Driver, we always watch it with John Hinckley. It is a film that forces us[…]
Comedy · Counterculture · Crime · Historical & Epic · Hollywood · Movies · Westerns
At Spahn Ranch: The Tragic Heart of Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
Who are these people? Watching Cliff try to figure it out is painful, because we know the future, but such knowledge is not power. Within its imagined boundaries, Once Upon[…]
Drama · LGBT & Queer · Russia
Alexander Gorchilin’s Acid (2018): Putin-Friendly Arthouse
My point here isn’t to suggest that Gorchilin and Pecheykin are government lackeys bent on pleasing Vladimir Putin. They’re young filmmakers working in a totalitarian country and have constraints that[…]
Movie Databases · Societal Trends · Statistics
Tracking Mass Ideology on IMDb’s Top 250: How Shifts in Societal Values Appear in the Popular Film Canon
No film on the list embodies a retreat into populist myth as totally or as troublingly as Forrest Gump (1994). Though critically and popularly lauded at its release (winning the[…]
To the Lighthouse: Cinematic Lighthouses in Shutter Island, Annihilation, and The Lighthouse
Through their own fragmentary narratives, which resemble Poe’s stream-of-consciousness diary, Shutter Island, Annihilation, and The Lighthouse mount challenges to our own perceptual abilities as viewers. They locate us in the[…]
“An Act of the Will”: A Review of The Irishman
The Irishman is delicate and full of restraint — ironic for a gangster flick. The heart of the film is sorrowful, in mourning for the spiritual emptiness of a materialist[…]
Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
“One Last Look at My Friends”: An Archetypal Review of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker
Now, there is no reason or way to lay blame for this clash of styles, since Abrams devotees can fairly claim that Johnson started the revisionary process, and the Johnsonians[…]
Monterey Dreamin’: 45 Years of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
In striving toward “that level of being real,” Burstyn handpicked much of the film’s eventual cast from her Actors Studio cohort – a decision that meshed well with both Scorsese’s[…]
Directors · Literature and Film · Production History · Writers & Critics
At Sea, In Port, Up the River: Orson Welles’s Conrad Adaptations
Conrad was more than a mere influence. He was also a direct source of story material. Welles considered himself “made for Conrad” and frequently returned to Conrad’s original stories. Adaptation[…]
A Human Noise: On Rebirth and Birdman (2014), Five Years After
“They had no song. Their calls were harsh and ugly. But their soaring was like an endless silent singing. What else had they to do? They were sea falcons now;[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
Klaatu’s Police Action: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Remembered
Suddenly, Gort doesn’t seem so powerful. We’re told of his strength and given a few meager examples. We have to take Klaatu’s word for it. The universe/world policeman is a[…]
Essays · Mystery · SF & Fantasy
Talkin’ ’bout My Gentrification: The Secret Life of The Kirlian Witness (1979)
“The city was dirty. And dirt is fertile.” – Jeremiah Moss * * * New York City ca. 1976 was dying on the vine. With over a million citizens on[…]
Comedy · Costume Drama · Historical & Epic
The Favourite (2018): A Comedy of Pity
This gets at the heart of The Favourite, which is one of the most evident trends in anti-sexist filmmaking lately: to be willing to portray women as unadulteratedly evil, as[…]
Of Parasites and Their Hosts: Bong Joon-ho’s Gisaengchung (2019)
One of the ways in which Parasite differs from many more naturalistic movies about urban poverty is that access to mediated experience is shown to be a function of opportunity[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · Philosophy
Once Upon a Time – Shots in the Hyperreal (on Tarantino’s New Film)
“Hey, you’re Rick fucking Dalton. Don’t you forget it.” – Once Upon a Time – in Hollywood “And so art is everywhere, since artifice is at the very heart of reality.”[…]
Franchises & Series · Superheroes
Joker: Sympathy Epic
“It’s there all the time, driving me out to wander the streets, following me, silently, but I can feel it there. It’s me, pursuing myself. . . . But who[…]
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