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, […]
Tag Archives: politics
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 […]
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: 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 […]
Double Feature: The Terminator and RoboCop
There are several interesting ways of contrasting these two landmark films about cybernetic organisms, or cyborgs. One could play up the dystopian angle, thinking of RoboCop as the Brazil (or […]
Tracing the Influence of Grand Illusion
Earlier this month, the Oscars happened, at which, to my great surprise and delight, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite took home Best Picture in addition to three other awards. It bested eight competitors, […]
An Enterprise of Great Pitch and Moment: My 10 Favorite Hamlet Movies
Probably the main reason that Hamlet has been such a popular subject for cinema from its very beginning — besides representing a grasp for artistic legitimacy in those early days, and […]
Uh … 3 ½? — Get Out
The Introduction One of the true cinematic success stories of this decade, both popularly and critically, is Jordan Peele’s Get Out, an original movie in an age of franchises that managed […]
The Manson Movies of 2019
The formula could be expressed thusly, matching up with the chronology of the three films’ premiere dates: Mary Harron’s Charlie Says (Venice Film Festival, September 2, 2018) intends to demythologize the […]
It Isn’t Funny If It Doesn’t Break: Crimes and Misdemeanors
As soothing as “separating the art from the artist” can be, sometimes the more useful course is to dive right into an artist’s output in the context of the allegations […]
