8 years ago
Longform (10 posts found)
On The Rhythms of Sorkinese
In Steve Jobs, director Danny Boyle’s most overt visual showcase is relegated to the film’s transitions. Set backstage at three different tech product launches, the film makes two major leaps forward in time between 1984 and 1988 and again between 1988 and 199...
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In Defense of Steven Spielberg’s “Hook”
Two children stand on a stage, sweetly fumbling their lines. “Don’t you know what a kiss is?” says one of the children. “I shall, if you give one to me,” says the other, before being handed a thimble. So begins Steven Spielberg’s 1991 film, Hook, adapting the ...
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The Panahi Conundrum
Take a cursory look at reviews for Jafar Panahi’s latest film, Taxi, and you’ll notice it ranks among the year’s most beloved titles. Between its premiere at the Berlinale earlier this year, where it was greeted with the festival’s highest prize, to its theatr...
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“Eliminate PG-13”: A Conversation On Violence in Media
Noah Gittell: Here we are again. It’s worth noting that I first pitched the idea of a published discussion on gun violence and the movies back in July, after a gunman killed two people during a screening of Trainwreck in Lafayette, La. Scheduling conflicts kep...
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“The Walk” and The Role of the Critic
I don't usually ask questions at press conferences. I'm too often crippled with self-doubt and assume that my question is not worth asking. But following the New York Film Festival press screening of The Walk, I couldn't resist. I raised my hand and spoke into...
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Another Brick: On Identity, Politics, and “Stonewall”
Writing about Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall has been in the back of my mind since the project was announced in 2013, before the trailer, before the promo images. Its presence in my mind as something to consider in any sense was twofold: first, as a newly out que...
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“Killer’s Kiss” At 60″
The imperfect, frequently bush-league Killer's Kiss fits almost too neatly into Stanley Kubrick's storied career. As his second feature following Fear & Desire, which he famously sought to suppress, it figures as his last first draft before the evolutionar...
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On The Enduring Strength And Subversion of Lily Tomlin
“I see these stiff, inhibited women,” Lily Tomlin told Time Magazine in 1977. “Uptight, uncertain, thwarted.” She was describing the audiences of her live performances. She saw repression everywhere—this discomfort within women externalized in their very body ...
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Chaos and Conviction: “King of New York” At 25
Released in the same year as Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Joel and Ethan Coen’s Miller’s Crossing, Abel Ferrara’s King of New York has shamefully slipped through the cracks when it comes to charting and discussing great early-1990s crime films. While compa...
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“Showgirls” At 20: It’s Better Than You Think
“You didn’t convince me” was the first substantial comment I received on my book It Doesn’t Suck when I passed around advance copies to friends and colleagues in early spring of 2014, after my editors at ECW Press had signed off on a final draft. Suffice it to...
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