8 years ago
All posts by Christopher Runyon
I Give You My Son: On Cinema As Authorial Therapy, Part 2
It was interesting ending the previous segment with Synecdoche, New York, which ended in the author's creation being led to ruin and despair, because a surprising amount of these authorial therapy films feature apocalypses or apocalyptic imagery to convey the ...
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The Leads of Their Own Stories: On Cinema as Authorial Therapy, Part 1
Christopher Runyon muses on films that work as "authorial therapy" and resonate with the emotional turmoil of their own authors.
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‘The Conspiracy’: A Paranoid, Original Found-Footage Thriller
"It wasn't so much conspiracy theories themselves as it was the people who believe in them that attracted me."
The Conspiracy opens with this line of dialogue, and experiments with bringing the viewer to that very state throughout the experience. Whether yo...
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The David Lynch Retrospective: ‘Inland Empire’
The Movie Mezzanine Filmmaker Retrospective series takes on an entire body of work–be it director’s, screenwriter’s, or otherwise–and analyzes each portion of the filmography. By the final post of a retrospective, there will be a better understanding of the fi...
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‘Short Term 12’ is Cinema At Its Most Compassionate, Vulnerable, and Human
Republished and altered from our LA Film Festival Coverage
There have been many films about at-risk teens receiving guidance from a surrogate parental figure, from Stand and Deliver to Freedom Writers to The Blind Side, which tend to feel false due to water...
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Adam Wingard’s ‘You’re Next’ is Hysterical, Brutal, and Tons of Fun
Republished and altered from our LA Film Festival coverage.
When I saw You're Next at the LA Film Festival, director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett introduced the film to the crowded theater by saying up front “We made this movie with the purpose of ...
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‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints’: A Flawed and Fictional Cinematic Folk Song
On paper, David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints is the kind of film that I'd be all over. Melding elements of an elegiac, Malick-ian romance with a Western-infused, Coen Brothers-esque crime plot, the 'Texas-set period film stars Rooney Mara and Casey Afflec...
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History of Film: David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’
David Lynch's Blue Velvet is a film containing all the ingredients of a Lynchian nightmare without venturing too deep into abstraction. It's because of this that the film isn't one of Lynch's more heavily dissected works, but that doesn't make it any less subs...
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The David Lynch Retrospective: ‘Mulholland Dr.’
The Movie Mezzanine Filmmaker Retrospective series takes on an entire body of work–be it director’s, screenwriter’s, or otherwise–and analyzes each portion of the filmography. By the final post of a retrospective, there will be a better understanding of the fi...
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‘Europa Report’: Effective Low-Budget Sci-fi
Europa Report is one of the most immediately involving science-fiction films in recent memory. Filmed in the format of a Discovery Channel style documentary but with found-footage elements, Ecuadorian director Sebastian Cordero draws you in with an incredibly ...
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