8 years ago
Longform (10 posts found)
Sunset and Stars: On Cronenberg’s “Maps to the Stars”
Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg’s first film shot in the U.S., is an unapologetic slap in the face of Hollywood. Replete with star-fucking, stalking, suicide, murder, and incest, it's essentially the smarter, meaner twin that ate The Canyons in utero. Star...
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Coded Switch: “The Imitation Game” and The Queer Film
As a film, The Imitation Game is fine: a conventional, but not unenjoyable little biopic. Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance is distracting, the use of archival footage is sort of atrocious, but it’s suspenseful like a BBC movie, which is fine by me. But I’m l...
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The Theory of the Tortured Genius
There was a time when geniuses were professionals who were not only good at their jobs, but pleasant to others as well. The entrenched stereotype of geniuses once labeled them as shy outsiders or tongue-tied geeks, not arrogant narcissists. Somewhere down the ...
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(Be)coming-of-Age Film: Céline Sciamma’s “Girlhood”
It would be naïve to believe that renaming Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles (or Girl Gang) to Girlhood for its North American release is a mere coincidence, and not a pointed rejoinder to Richard Linklater’s award-winning behemoth. Certainly, there is no denyi...
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Backstreet’s Back: A Critic’s Story
I distinctly recall the first time I heard a Backstreet Boys song, sitting in my family’s tiny hatchback, leisurely listening to “The World Chart Show.” The radio program was part of a weekly ritual in which I accompanied my mother grocery shopping, but stayed...
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Fade to Red: The Desire of Xavier Dolan
Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know—because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it, it turned to dust in my hand.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
Words fly fast and furiou...
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American Ambivalence: Sizing Up Clint Eastwood’s Late Style Aberration
Speaking to David Poland about Clint Eastwood’s take on his Hereafter script late in 2010, Peter Morgan admitted to some surprise at the film’s fast-track development from inception to realization, noting that the venerable director wanted to shoot his first d...
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Televisionary: Michael Mann’s Network Journeys
A contemporary of Martin Scorsese, John Milius and Michael Cimino, Michael Mann didn’t take on the big screen until 1981, so it’s no wonder that his theatrical debut, Thief, exudes more than a hint of the elegiac. It’s tempting to connect the melancholy of tha...
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Stuck in the Middle with You: Defending “Tammy”
When considering the inherent biases of film critics, we usually think about race and gender first. Despite some progress made in the last few years, the vast majority of critics are still white and male. At least this is a fixable problem, although it will su...
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High and Know: On Stoned-Logic and the Expansion of the Stoner Film
In “Film Genre and the Genre Film,” Thomas Schatz lays down a few organizing principles that make up a film genre. Basically, there’s a system of conventions that over time eventually codify into “rules” that clearly identify a genre—think a Western with its r...
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