A Book Review Essay by T. R. Merchant-Knudsen. Terrence Malick’s name remains tinged with a sense of mystique and the aura of philosophical images within his sprawling films. His filmography echoes and reverberates through time in ways that often appear nonlinear; in these places, images of nature and their intersection […]
Buster Keaton’s Genius, Derailed: The Cameraman (Criterion Collection)
Thomas Gladysz
July 6, 2020
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By Thomas Gladysz. Film history is littered with the stories of stars whose careers were derailed by their studios, and themselves. Orson Welles and Erich von Stroheim are two of the best known examples. Each saw their careers go off the tracks for reasons that had as much to do […]
Rise of the Female Director: Liberating Hollywood by Maya Montañez Smuckler
Madeline Hawk
July 1, 2020
A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971) A Book Review Essay by Madeline Hawk. 83 years after Dorothy Arzner became the first female to direct a Hollywood feature film in 1927, Kathryn Bigelow became the first to win an Oscar for Best Director in 2010. But what happened in the 83 […]
In Defense of an Iconoclast: Peter Wyngarde: A Life Amongst Strangers by Tina Wyngarde-Hopkins
Department S (1969-70) By Tony Williams. “Peter Wyngarde defined the complete, bravura actor who dominated a stage with an incomparable elegant physical presence and a voice which defined emulation, a voice akin to music.” Steven Berkhoff (190) “Peter Wyngarde is an incomparable player of dashing, juicy rakehells, men on the […]
A Western by Any Other Name: Destry Rides Again (Criterion Collection)
Jeremy Carr
June 21, 2020
By Jeremy Carr. There is, first and most famously, Marlene Dietrich. Since the time of its premiere in 1939, to its latest reemergence in the form of a Criterion Collection Blu-ray, conversation concerning Destry Rides Again has inevitably, and quite justly, hinged on the presence of this beguiling, Berlin-born beauty. […]
Dark Smörgåsbord: Horror Anthologies and Scare Package (2019)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. From Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998) to Julian Richards’s The Last Horror Movie (2003), there’s something about the very materiality of the video cassette that evokes horror. Is there something vaguely symbolic about those little black coffins of cinematic memory? Do we subconsciously read them as the perfect […]
More to the Show: Jeffrey McHale on You Don’t Nomi
Ali Moosavi
June 9, 2020
By Ali Moosavi. Showgirls (1995) is one of the most notorious films in Hollywood history. Director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas were riding high on the massive box office success of their previous joint effort, Basic Instinct (1992). Perhaps because of that success, the critics had sharpened their pencils, […]
Mrs. Steve Austin: The Bionic Woman and The Woman’s Film
David Greven
May 26, 2020
By David Greven. The following is an excerpt from The Bionic Woman and Feminist Ethics: An Analysis of the 1970s Television Series © 2020 David Greven by permission of McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640. www.mcfarlandbooks.com. As I will have several occasions to note, The Bionic Woman […]
Some Grace Notes from Tarantino: Thoughts on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Christopher Sharrett
May 18, 2020
By Christopher Sharrett. Those who know me will be shocked to read this piece, a partial valuation of Quentin Tarantino’s last film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I have considered the filmmaker a nihilist – the word popped into my head when I saw Reservoir Dogs at its premiere (today, I […]
The Magnificent Stranger: Pasolini’s Teorema and its Tradition (Criterion Collection)
Christopher Sharrett
February 24, 2020
By Christopher Sharrett. Many years ago I moved into a small house not far from the university where I took my first tenure-track position. It was a cozy little place on a pleasant street where ancient trees formed a protective, shady bower. It was a lower-middle-class neighborhood that seemed friendly. […]