8 years ago
All posts by Colin Stacy
Alien of the Cinema
Colin Stacy writes an appreciation of John Travolta's mid-1990s resurgence, as depicted in three films released in 1996.
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The Cinema of Tumult and Discovery: On Judy Garland
“You know, I figure you have to know what you’re singing about before you can get the idea over to other people.” —Judy Garland, Babes in Arms (1939)
It was a year of tumult and of discovery. The Great Plains were ravaged by the Dust Bowl. Amelia Earhart comp...
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On The Vexing Moral Murkiness of “Sicario”
Denis Villeneuve doesn’t make movies about human beings. After watching his last three works, Prisoners, Enemy, and Sicario, it’s clear that the inhabitants of his worlds are merely representations. This doesn’t seem intentional as much as it is incidental. Hi...
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“We Are Not Things”: Women as Depicted in “Mad Max: Fury Road” & “Transformers”
There is a scene early in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road in which a woman is shown scaling Imperator Furiosa’s war-rig tanker to enter the cab. The audience is bound to assume this woman is part of the precious cargo stolen from the tyrannical self-proclai...
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“Still Life”
The title of writer, director, and producer Uberto Pasolini's new film Still Life is the key to its storytelling. Taking it literally, Pasolini's direction echoes the title of the film. He allows this story to unfold in quiet compositions of a small, mannered ...
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Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Posters of Michael Mann
It doesn’t take an in-depth analysis of his films to figure out which themes Michael Mann has devoted his whole career to. He keeps his film titles simple, precise, usually one or two words: Thief, Manhunter, Heat, Collateral. Most of his posters feature men p...
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The Art House Next Door: 6 Picks from Fandor
Every streaming service is a journey, and personally, I have been experiencing a heavy fatigue. Most digital streaming platforms favor content over quality, leaving viewers hanging in the void of indecisiveness, meandering endlessly from title to title in a ci...
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I Will Find You, and I Will Mock You: The Best “Taken” Parodies
Liam Neeson shoots, karate chops, and broods his way back into the hearts of moviegoers everywhere on Friday, January 9th. Yes, folks, we are but mere hours away from the release of Taken 3 (originally Tak3n, changed for those confused by the use of a "3" in l...
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Losing My Religion: “The Decalogue”
Twenty-five years ago, before the “golden age of television” was ever christened, Krzysztof Kieslowski blessed Polish TV sets with his majestic work The Decalogue, a series of 10 short films loosely based on the Ten Commandments. It was a distinctive cinematic...
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