8 years ago
Longform (10 posts found)
“Last Tango in Paris”: Basking in the Bowels of Human Discontent
When Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris was first released in 1972, it garnered considerable controversy, with many calling for censure and others praising it for its graphic sexuality. Considering how difficult an experience it is, even now, no wonder....
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The Liberating, Evil Feminism of Gone Girl
Warning: Major spoilers for “Gone Girl” ahead.
In the opening moments of David Fincher’s domestic-union-gone-bad thriller Gone Girl, Nick Dunne (a seemingly vulnerable and sympathetic Ben Affleck) voices a desire to “crack a skull open.” The skull in questi...
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The Universal Dance of “La Nacion Clandestina”
In a recent video essay for All That Jazz, Matt Zoller Seitz refers to director Bob Fosse’s editing style as evoking a “continuously unfolding present tense moment.” Influenced by the French New Wave and Sam Peckinpah’s ballets of violence, Fosse Time, Seitz a...
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Beyond Narrative: When Cinema Stops Making Sense
Stand outside of your local cineplex one evening and eavesdrop on people chatting as they exit the theater. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll hear someone grouse, “Damn, I wish that movie had been more difficult to understand.” But inscrutability is by no means...
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Beyond Blaxploitation: A Few Words About James Earl Jones
In the latest installment of our series about black cinema in the '70s, we examine the career of one of our most esteemed black actors, which runs deeper than you may think.
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Future Panic: Temporal Anxiety in 2014 Films
In her 2006 text "Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image," film theorist Laura Mulvey carefully maps out the medium's obsession with death. Celluloid degrades, film preservation provides a finite but eternal life to dead people, and home-viewing of...
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Beyond Blaxploitation: The Last Gasp of the Divided Self
In this installment of our series on black film in the '70s, we look at the work of two seminal black filmmakers of the period.
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Charlie’s Country, David Gulpilil and the Realities of Race in Australia
Katina Vangopoulos explores the depiction of contemporary Indigenous Australia, as seen in Rolf de Heer's new film Charlie's Country
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Embracing The Magic: What “Boyhood” Forgets About The “Dance” Of Childhood
Jodorowsky remembers what Linklater forgets: childhood is about more than a time period.
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Beyond Blaxpoitation: Other Voices, Other Faces
In August, 1965, the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Watts and Compton caught fire. After years of racial tension, segregated housing and police brutality, the largely African American community had rioted. Surviving footage shows flames, rubble, devastation. B...
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