Double Feature: For Sama and A Diary for Timothy
The shot lasts only about seventeen seconds, a simple downward tilt. First we see Sama, the young daughter of journalist and filmmaker Waad al-Kateab, being held by her father, Hamza, […]
Category Archives: Film
Overdue: A City of Sadness
Here begins a new blog series, in which I pick at a list of movies that I’ve never seen before but really should have by now. The parameters are just […]
Double Feature: Memento and Irreversible
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”–Kierkegaard “He destroyed my ability to live.”–Leonard Shelby, Memento “Paranoiacs need everything explained. Some things can’t be explained.”–Alex, Irreversible […]
Sullivan’s Travels by Preston Sturges
A message movie disguised as a frothy comedy when it isn’t a frothy comedy disguised as a message movie, Sullivan’s Travels (1941) is an inside-baseball satire on Hollywood’s self-importance and […]
Double Feature: Murder by Death and Clue
Detective stories were among Hollywood’s very first franchises, offering durable structures and just enough variation to keep people wanting more. For the most part, these films were based on popular […]
The Felliniesque Century
Consistently regarded as one of the world’s very greatest filmmakers, Federico Fellini is a daunting subject. Developing a bombastic and playful style, he is one of the few who can […]
“He Doesn’t Need You; He’s Got His Memories” — Selznick’s and Hitchcock’s Rebecca
David O. Selznick brought Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood in 1939 and promptly got the British master his first and only Best Picture win at the Academy Awards. That film, Rebecca (1940) […]
Double Feature: Zora Neale Hurston’s Ethnographic Films and Daughters of the Dust
Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, was also something of an amateur filmmaker, documenting everyday life and work in the American South as part of anthropological […]
The Class of 2020: My Favorite Movies
The Distracted Boyfriend meme is nowhere more applicable than in the life of a cinephile. Whatever movie I plan on seeing next, the thought will always occur to me before […]
Double Feature: The Devil Is a Woman and That Obscure Object of Desire
In addition to a pair of silent film adaptations and a 1959 Julien Duvivier film starring Brigitte Bardot, the two most notable cinematic takes on the 1898 Pierre Louÿs novel La […]
