Historical & Epic · Horror · Women in Film
Watch it Again! The Witch (2015)
The Witch is about what is in woman that is presumed not to exist, because it cannot be seen. * * * Robert Altman’s 3 Women is mostly a high-kitsch[…]
Drama · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
I am Blade Runner 2049, Blade Runner 2049 is I
“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the window pane. I was the smudge of ashen fluff – and I Lived on, flew on,[…]
Horror · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality
Bella Donna: Lilith, Gaia, and the Spectral Mother in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday
We will go back to our old gods again. – Goethe * * * My eyes. My eyes. I’m seeing again. Across a gulf of how-many years, the light is[…]
Tempest in a Teaspoon – Thomas Adès Opera of Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel
Alan Vanneman goes to the Met – the Metropolitan Opera, that is. The Met was looking for a film critic who likes opera to review Thomas Adès operatic version of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Silents
Boxcars, Beery, and a Dutch Bob: William Wellman’s Beggars of Life (1928) on Blu-ray
What we see in Brooks and Beery on the screen is a mixup of the actors’ hardwired personalities and those contrived for their roles, but this is the sort of[…]
Wonderstruck II: Todd Haynes’ Places of Discovery and Wonder
Wonderstruck seems a retreat from some of Haynes’ established themes, in that it’s not set in the fifties and, as a PG-rated, child-oriented adventure film, instead pursues the marvelous and[…]
Wonderstruck I: Synchronizing the Heart with the Eyes
Haynes spares us slack-jawed bug-eyed Spielbergian reactions shots, but he also denies us deep emotional engagement. The visuals shadow and overwhelm the actors as they wander the bustling Haynes-Selznick landscapes.[…]
Drama · Essays · Uncategorized
Running, Reeling, Floating Free – On Hidden Figures, Humanity and Paper Balloons, City Streets
Isn’t something less reassuring and a lot more interesting going on – something more inclusive, diverse, and genuinely universal? * * * There are still too many human beings on[…]
Watch it Again! Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982)
The beautiful grime in Blade Runner challenges you to find humanity in the mechanism of our future, humanity which Scott omits. So we search the frigid replicants for their ghosts,[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
Memories and Confessions: On the Filmography of Terence Davies
Davies – who can be described as a cultural conservative but never a simple nostalgist – wears his affection for his forgotten eras on his sleeve, generally eschewing close-ups in[…]
Books · Comics · Franchises & Series
Book Review: Make Ours Marvel: Media Convergence and a Comics Universe, ed. by Matt Yockey
Make Ours Marvel: Media Convergence and a Comics Universe, edited by Matt Yockey. $29.95, 364pp. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. In August this year, Netflix released The Defenders, the[…]
Book Review: Fucking Innocent: The Early Films of Wes Anderson, by John Andrew Fredrick
Fucking Innocent: The Early Films of Wes Anderson, by John Andrew Fredrick. $15.95, 288 pp. Rare Bird Books, 2017. The first thing to note about John Andrew Fredrick’s book is[…]
Franchises & Series · Thrillers & Action
Watch It Again! Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
The scriptwriters and fortune tellers have so cluttered the rest of the film with wild and haphazard injections of in jokes and outlandish gags … that it becomes repetitious and tedious.[…]
Can I Hit It? Highlights of the 2017 Melbourne International Film Festival
“Once you have a hammer, doesn’t everything look like a nail? In Hong Sang-soo’s films, everyone’s a nail.” * * * The most anticipated films on the festival circuit this[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality · Romance
Cosmic Melodrama: Darren Aronofsky’s mother!
Whatever else it is, mother! is ultimately a woman’s anxious nightmare about what it feels like to put your heart and soul into creating something only for people to take[…]
White Privilege? It’s in the Fine Print (Django Unchained, American Hustle, 99 Homes)
The stories of Dr. King Schultz, Irving Rosenfeld, and Nick Carver contain a critique of American society deeper than just “white guys always get the benefit of the doubt.” These[…]
Horror · Philosophy · Romance
Lonely, but Not Alone: Death as a Collective Experience in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story
Regardless of whether it is worth doing or not, people will continue to rely on memory as a way to create legacy and heritage. People will always leave things behind,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Film Technology & History · Silents
Florence Lawrence and the Truth Behind “We Nail a Lie” (Famous Ads, 1910)
Ever since the ad appeared, there have been unanswered questions: who or what was behind the rumors of Florence Lawrence’s death? Did these rumors start because the fans of her[…]
Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer
Before Wilde: Cinematic Portrayals – and the Lack Thereof – of Medieval and Early Modern Queer Historical Figures
There are two major threads here. In one, the queer figure from history becomes a way to explore the consequences of existing in a society that wars against the individual’s[…]
Happy 100th, Bobby Bumps, Surf Rider!
While it’s always difficult to make such a claim with assurance – for decades Disney’s 1937 Goofy feature Hawaiian Holiday was confidently thought to hold that honor – Bobby Bumps[…]
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