Secret Lives: On Phantom Thread
Note: This is the first of two reviews of Phantom Thread. Watch for Raymond De Luca’s take later this week. Each viewing paints old interactions in new colors, and the film thrives[…]
Film Crews · Production History
Get a Grip: Celebrating Those Overworked, Underpaid, Practically Invisible Technicians Who Help Make the Movies
A grip is a jack-of-all-trades: part mover, part roadie, part handyman, part mechanic, and part mechanical engineer. Grips are in charge of lifting, moving, constructing, rigging, pushing, driving, and securing[…]
Dark Undercurrents: Claude Chabrol’s Second Wave from Les Biches (1968) to Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975)
“There are no waves, there is only the ocean.” – Claude Chabrol * * * From 1968 to 1975 Claude Chabrol directed a dozen films – one of the most[…]
A Mannequin’s Face: Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford was born on this day in 1905. Our buddy Howard Mandelbaum wrote this incisive tribute to her in the 1970s. We reprint it here for your reading pleasure.[…]
Directors · Horror · SF & Fantasy
Weird and Pissed Off: Field Notes on John Carpenter’s First Fifteen Years
“It’s better to be a human being than an imitation.”- John Carpenter, on The Thing * * * 1. Begin with sound. Begin with Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). A[…]
Lady Bird, Lady Bird, What the Heck Are You?
The internal structure of Lady Bird is, I think, unconsciously designed to evoke the monster mother and then deflect the daughterly hostility she provokes by turning things around to insist,[…]
African · African American · Comics · Franchises & Series · SF/Fantasy
The Fight to Be Fathered: False Political Pretenses in Black Panther
The media’s insistence on making more of the film than a big, enjoyably dumb action movie only highlights the drastic shift in representation in casting and marketing as a predatory[…]
African · Experimental & Underground · New Media · Video Artists
Senses of Times and Times of Death: Contemporary African Video Works at the National Museum of African Art
We might presume the temporal slips at stake in an African video exhibit are squarely political or anticolonial, but the videos’ slow, reverse, and repeated motions also link politico-economic disorder[…]
Designers · Interviews · LGBT & Queer
Designing Desire: Production Designer Samuel Deshors Talks about Call Me by Your Name
Call Me by Your Name was nominated for four Academy Awards this year, including Best Picture, Best Lead Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song. In this interview, production designer[…]
Directors · Essays · Philosophy
Asking the Wrong Questions: Reiteration and Doubling in David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Mullholland Drive, and Inland Empire
“Mystery is good, confusion is bad. And there’s a big difference between the two.” – David Lynch * * * A survey of the critical literature pertaining to David Lynch’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy
No One Gets In Alive! Kicking Down Doors with the Marx Brothers
The Brothers don’t enter into sanctimonious class systems, organizational institutions, or drawing rooms to assimilate and enjoy the fruits of its privileges either; they gain access, enact a savage modus[…]
“Disease with a Purpose”: Ex-Boyfriends, Abortion and The Fly (1986)
But the choice to get this thing out of her body, to have an abortion, is made up of equal parts self-compassion and safety. It is entirely locatable. Ronnie is[…]
Animation · Designers · Fashion
Tear That Dress Off: Cinderella (1950) and Disney’s Critique of Postwar Fashion
Disney’s Cinderella was released on this day, February 15, in 1950. We celebrate her “birth” by reposting Emanuele Lugli’s witty tribute/takedown of Cinderella via her – and the period’s –[…]
Drugs · Military and Paramilitary · Thrillers & Action · Urban Conflict · War
A Land of Wolves: Sicario and the New Drug War Film
“In the company of wolves was a stretcher made of cobblestone curfews as the federales performed their custodial customs quite well.” – At the Drive In * * * In[…]
Vibrant Matter in Blade Runner 2049
Blade Runner 2049 resists our contemporary moment of political and cultural polarization that exploits difference as a cudgel to reinforce (inevitably racialized) hostilities. The film instead forwards a vision of[…]
Activist & Political · Drama · Essays
Beatriz at Dinner: Eating Up the Whole World
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Essays
Between The Butler and Black Dynamite: Servility, Militancy, and the Meaning of Blaxploitation
The existence of films such as Black Samson and The Spook Who Sat by the Door reminds us that there was an era, however fleeting, in which commercial films discarded[…]
Documentaries · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality
So, “What Is Reality?” The E8 Lattice Theory and the Angel of History
“All time exists all the time” – from the documentary What Is Reality? * * * Emancipate yourself from the tunnel-visioned timekeeper! Return the unbending arrow of time to its[…]
Activist & Political · Festivals & Awards
Dislocations: The 58th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (2-12 November 2017)
Emblematic of the prevailing sober atmosphere was the festival’s Invisible Hands Tribute, a series of five films about the erosion of workers’ rights, unemployment, and collective action. * * *[…]
Being the Story: Talking with Fabien Riggall about Secret Cinema
The secrecy part of Secret Cinema relates very much to this digital and automated world that we are living in. People increasingly want to get away from screens. They want[…]
