By Tanja Bresan. Sharrett’s deep dive in his book uncovers what drives the show: a similar original sin manifesting in America’s white males with their driving force: toxic white male privilege.” Christopher Sharrett’s recent entry into Wayne State’s University Press’s TV Milestones series examines Breaking Bad, one of the most […]
Everyone’s Cinema Scholar: Remembering David Bordwell (1947-2024)
Film International editors, contributors, and correspondents offer personal tributes and commentary on the late scholar of cinema. I regret never having the pleasure of meeting David Bordwell. My only interaction with him was a lively email exchange little over 10 years ago. I was planning an article on the early […]
Reflections on Oppenheimer: The Jewish Question, Bad Conscience, the Bomb
By Christopher Sharrett. This story is well-known…. We are deprived of the factors transforming him into the destroyer of worlds, as well as those making him into the pathetic cowboy, and the smart aleck who could not mount a sensible defense in the face of imbeciles without being a stupid, […]
The Quiet Girl and Reflections on the Season
By Christopher Sharrett. The conclusion of the film makes a basic point: the biological family is often inauthentic, the authentic family a matter of individual will, with affection created by need, and a deep kinship not often subject to accidents of flesh.” Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl wasn’t ignored during […]
Tyranny and the Canon: Problems in Todd Field’s Tár
By Christopher Sharrett. As a way of addressing woke culture, it has precious little to say, especially as it irresponsibly conflates the culture with sexual predation, a glaringly different matter, unless the film is aimed at those with grievances about women having too much power…. There is so little music […]
Rebellion and Cataclysm: Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue (1980)
By Christopher Sharrett. Hopper’s is a surprisingly radical statement for a filmmaker known for his very inconsistent political thinking.” What to say about Dennis Hopper? In his day he could be a pain in the neck, publicly brandishing his neuroses, failures, and addictions – in the new Severin edition of […]
For Jean-Luc Godard: 1930-2022
By Christopher Sharrett. One of the great innovators of the cinema…the supreme artist and intellectual engaged with his era.” When I first encountered Godard decades ago, I thought he might be better off writing essays rather than making films, since he seemed interested in making philosophical points about the image […]
The Rules of the Game: Laura Wandel’s Playground
By Christopher Sharrett. Wandel has us pondering a crucial concern: is education predicated on patriarchal-capitalist ideology, as would seem most obvious, or do we confront, at this level of human development, some inherent savagery in the species (a problem with ‘human nature’)?” I was very happy to read on this […]
The Prison House of Privilege: Pablo Larrain’s Spencer
By Christopher Sharrett. A portrait of female disintegration to a point that [the film] has been termed a horror film, an extreme designation, but not wholly inaccurate.” I saw Spencer at its opening, but I’ve waited to comment on it until I could view it carefully on Blu-ray, such is […]
Rose-Tinted Glasses – The Beatles: Get Back
By Christopher Sharrett. Peter Jackson’s new documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, culled from fifty hours of film left over from the 1970 film Let It Be…tends to make [their breakup] rosier than it was, with the band in a mostly kindly mood but for a couple of nasty scrapes.” The […]