Good Grief: Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers
“Solving” the film’s psychological mysteries – understanding how Adam’s ghosts arise from his grief – is the film’s central interpretive demand, and one of its pleasures. It’s the film’s conclusion[…]
Drama · Eco · Games & Gaming · Literature and Film · SF & Fantasy · War
Villeneuve’s Dune, Warhammer 40K, and the Next Frontier of Space Operas
The everyday hero is a foreign concept in a universe where obscure machinations corrode a society that blindly follows in the hopes of stability and lasting glory. * * *[…]
Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Horror · Urban Conflict
Garbageman: C.H.U.D. at 40
On the face of it, C.H.U.D. might look like a superficial protest against this schema – like a trite version of David and Goliath wherein the tenacity of a neighbourhood[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books · Drama
Book Review: Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Philip Gefter
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Philip Gefter. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024. $42.00 * * * I love “making of”[…]
Drama · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
On 2001: A Space Odyssey: The Monolith and Its Influences
In this new reading of 2001, the monolith is used as a touchstone for considering a dozen tangents into iconoclastic cinema, the human and simian response to enigma, and the[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Horror
Hell Is for Angels: The Tragedy of Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel
Hell is for angels. Only the mighty are fallen Only the sun-touched can plummet to these depths. – Lenore Kandel * * * Something drove producer Herman Cohen and his[…]
Biopic · Drama · Men & Masculinity · Military and Paramilitary
Confessions of a Masc: On Paul Schrader’s Mishima
Words, and the internal fictions they represented, would never be enough to join Mishima’s corporeal self to the abstract notion of beauty except in a dreamlike capacity, which would not[…]
Elegy of Ephemera: Exploring Decay in Bill Morrison’s Cinema
The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object . . . which we do not suspect.1 – Marcel Proust,[…]
Crime · Drama · Family · French Cinema · Linguistics and Language
Anatomy of a Fall and the Expatriate’s Predicament
Daniel is presented as a talented pianist, with an intellect of one well beyond his years. He is both strong-willed and sensitive. He is affectionate with his mother, yet culturally[…]
Asian · Drama · Experimental & Underground
Auto-Focus: Reflexivity, Autocritique, and Formal Experimentation in Hong Sang-soo’s In Water (2023)
The reflexive nature of Hong’s formalism, in which stylistic decisions call attention to themselves and point to the mediating presence of the man behind the camera, makes it problematic to[…]
Book Review: Terrence Malick and the Examined Life, by Martin Woessner. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. $65.00
Malick, in other words, is a director who established himself during the transition from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood, where experimenting became the norm, and it is while experimenting at[…]
Animation · Animators · New Genres · New Media
Mercs and Mortality: Emesis Blue, a Fan-Made Team Fortress 2 Horror Flick
The film may appear gamer oriented, but general audiences should find it accessible and entertaining based on its fright factor alone. It’s simultaneously a boon to content-starved TF2 diehards and[…]
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · Communism and Socialism · Race · Women in Film
A Difficult Woman: The Disobedient Life of Jean Muir
At every turn, Muir was disobedient, unconventional, and disruptive; she simply didn’t care what people thought. At no point did it occur to her that she should curb her activism,[…]
Animals · Documentaries · German Cinema · Nature
Werner Herzog’s Mystic Powers of Storytelling through the Archive: On Grizzly Man and The Fire Within
I will be writing about just what his meticulous and brilliant use of archival footage in these films does to the stories, and how there is a thread connecting them[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · Holocaust
The Air We Breathe: Ecology and Atmosphere in The Zone of Interest (2023)
If the choking of the camp victims is muffled in the film, it is darkly recapitulated in the sputtering coughs that spread through the family, from Höss to Hedwig’s mother.[…]
Absurdism · Cityscapes · Drama · Literature and Film · Writers & Critics
Cosmopolis: A DeLillo–Cronenberg Mutation
Cosmopolis reflects the experience of a cancer patient, housed within a corporatized institution, dependent on the biases and whims of authorities, machines, and data. The book and film, poorly reviewed[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays · Romance
Gazing at Gary Cooper: Sex, Power, Gender, and the Body in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), Ball of Fire (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957)
As with Monroe, his seemingly all-but-transparent method has proven remarkably difficult to emulate, much less duplicate. (Toles, 2003: 34) Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type? That was[…]
Horror Held in Sunbeams Along the Garden Wall: On The Zone of Interest and the Mundanity of Preservation
Sunbeams, radiant and warm. Human bodies, young and old. And who are imprisoned here, our hearts are yet not cold. We who are imprisoned here, are wakeful as the stars[…]
Crime · Directors · Drama · Historical & Epic
Simply Human: Bob Clark’s Murder by Decree
The animal is the only genuine thing in man. – Frank Wedekind * * * A woman sits rhythmically rocking by candlelight, her eyes focused on a distant point. Around[…]
Crime · Drama · Historical & Epic · Indigenous · Native Americans
Family Viewing: The Osage Nation, the Reign of Terror, and Killers of the Flower Moon
Killers interweaves the Western, film noir, the gangster film, the police procedural, the courtroom drama, and even a bit of horror; however, it jumps between them with often elliptical editing[…]
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