Announcing My 2021 Movie Retrospective: The Films of Frank Capra
The director of my current choice for “favorite movie of all time” was a paradigmatic American success story: a Sicilian immigrant who rose through the ranks of a booming industry […]
Tag Archives: war
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, […]
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 […]
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, […]
Double Feature: With Barton Fink In a Lonely Place
Welcome to Hollywood: where art goes to die, or so the story goes. Of all cinematic craftspeople, the writer is typically the most prone to cynicism, because the average screenwriter […]
“Every Soda Jerk in This Country’s Got an Idea He’s Somebody” — Class in The Best Years of Our Lives
William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives is fondly remembered as an honest and heartfelt look at the struggles of returning veterans. More than seventy years later, not only have […]
Double Feature: Sans Soleil and Cameraperson
“Everything interested him.” These words are spoken by the unseen narrator early on in Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil. The “him” of the sentence is essentially Marker, though the speaker always refers […]
The End of the Beginning: My 10 Favorite BPFW Movies
Even before I really knew much about movies, I had a strange pride in the ones that came out in my birth year. There was a sense of ownership over […]
Reenacting History in Glory
In considering the merits of history-based movies, there are the rote facts and there’s the spirit that ties them together. Only pedants obsess over the former when the latter is […]
Patriotism With Both Eyes Open: The Manchurian Candidate
I hadn’t noticed this the first few times I’d watched the movie, but John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate both begins and ends with a discussion about the Medal of Honor. (Technically, […]
