8 years ago
Essential Reading (10 posts found)
Quintessential material
The Lars von Trier Retrospective
There are very few provocateurs in the film biz these days, and of the ones that do exist, hardly any hold a candle to Lars von Trier's consistently shocking, daring, extraordinary filmography. Originally one of the founders of the Dogme-95 movement of avant-g...
Read more →
The Case Against Wes Anderson
There is a shot in the first reel of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel that will feel awfully familiar to devotees of the Anderson canon. Hotel concierge Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) walks down a long hallway off the lobby of the film’s titular hotel, and ...
Read more →
Infographic: Diversity Gap in the Academy
While I'm not one to outright vilify the Academy Awards as outrageously racist, there's been a trend in the Academy's 85 years of existence of excluding minorities. After winning Best Actress for her role in Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett's wisely observed that ...
Read more →
How “RoboCop” Lost Its Political Edge
In this Era of Remakes, it is rare to find a film whose subject matter actually deserves to be re-examined. Most of the time, movie studios simply take a popular property, cast a couple of young stars in it, and update a few of the details. Robocop could have ...
Read more →
How We Fell In Love With the Movies
'Tis the day of love, this February 14th, and thus we'll all be focusing on the loves that make our lives worth while, whether they exist or not. But no matter how many times your heart is broken by another person, you could at least always count on great movi...
Read more →
“Alphaville”: Visions of Modernity
Blinding neon signs. A flashing spotlight. Cars whizzing by, rendered as a series of whooshes and blurs. The ominous beep-beep-beep of electronic displays. Jean-Luc Godard built his "Alphaville" out of these snatches and signifiers of then-contemporary life, a...
Read more →
Have Urban Critics Gotten ‘Labor Day’ Wrong?
If you are a frequent visitor to your local multiplex, you have might have noticed that there has been a serious dearth of movies about small-town American life these days. Last year’s Nebraska notwithstanding, Hollywood just doesn’t seem interested in telling...
Read more →
Let’s Kill the Guilty Pleasure
Everyone should be free to like what they want to like.
I think that's an idea that most people agree on. Few would quibble with the proposal that a person's tastes is his or her own, and nothing to be ashamed of. Doesn't it go without saying?
I think it's...
Read more →
Postwar Cinema: The Polish School
Poland’s film production of the 1950s and the early 1960s, known as the Polish School, offers a rich array of cinematic approaches—from understated existentialist meditations on loneliness to swanky noir, with touches of Hitchcock and melodrama. A number of th...
Read more →
Critic Speak: The Oscars Have Problems, but Ten Nominees Ain’t One
A couple of articles popped up this week crying for the end of the expanded Best Picture field at the Academy Awards, I'm not convinced.
Mark Harris at Grantland and Jen Chaney at The Dissolve are the writers calling for the conservative roll back of the Os...
Read more →
