8 years ago
All posts by Nick Usen
Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Opening Shot of Halloween
Earlier this month, John Carpenter’s seminal genre work Halloween, and its spectral force of pure evil Michael Myers, celebrated 35 years of hacking and slashing the residents of Haddonfield, Ill. Halloween was a pitch-black examination of Original Sin wreakin...
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‘Forgetting The Girl’ Is A Far From Memorable Thriller
Committed performances aren't enough to make Forgetting The Girl more than pale imitation of a thriller.
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A Personal Connection Between James Gray, Food, Judaism & Me
Since its bow at Cannes in May, countless cinephiles -- myself especially -- have been eagerly awaiting the release of James Gray’s fifth feature film The Immigrant. In an attempt to quell while simultaneously stoking my excitement, I have begun to re-watch Gr...
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Summer of Nick: ‘Taxi Driver’
This weekend saw the release of Paul Schrader’s (director of Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and writer of Raging Bull) newest film The Canyons. Released on VOD Schrader's latest is very much a film of the now. From its Kickstarter origins to its release plat...
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Paul Schrader’s ‘The Canyons’ Examines and Reveals the Artificiality of our Culture
Cinema is not quite dead, but according to Paul Schrader’s newest film, movie theaters certainly are. The battered and boarded-up theaters that highlight The Canyons' opening frames signify that the medium has moved on, in both form and function. As the traile...
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Death by Hype, Hall H, and How James Mangold’s ‘The Wolverine’ Changed the Game
After Pacific Rim was released a few weeks ago it seemed to signal the peak of the summer blockbuster season. Pacific Rim was the last in a seemingly endless line of multimillion dollar films that the various studios have been promoting and cinephiles have bee...
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Summer of Nick: ‘Rebel Without A Cause’
It's safe to say that one of the most difficult, complicated, and downright confusing times in a person’s life is their teenage years. Countless internal chemical changes aside, it's often a perplexing task navigating the tumultuous social world that is high s...
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Summer of Nick: ‘Safety Last!’
On June 18th, the Criterion Collection released the comedic masterpiece Safety Last! on Blu-Ray. The comical mishaps and physical gags of Harold Lloyd’s shop Boy as he attempts to navigate the ever modernizing metropolis are as brilliant as they are timeless.
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Motion In The Flux: The Postcolonial Hong Kong Of ‘Chungking Express’
This article originally appeared at Gazing At Film.
Hong Kong is a nation without a past. After spending time as a British colony, it was then handed back over to China causing it to be in a constant state of motion. Unlike America, which began as colonies...
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Summer of Nick: ‘Gone With The Wind’
How does one even begin to grapple with a monolith? It's a seemingly insurmountable task to engage with a piece of cinema steeped in such history and grandeur as Gone With The Wind. The name alone causes each and every person to conjure various images and quot...
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