A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. Slavoj Žižek is by far one of the most prominent intellectuals active today, gaining much of his popularity from his frequent engagement with popular culture, expansive bibliography, and endlessly entertaining lectures. To the chagrin of figures like David Bordwell, the Slovenian philosopher—perhaps the small […]
The World’s End (2013)
September 3, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. In film, there are any number of ways the world can end: zombies wreak havoc across the globe, colossal monsters terrorize earth from an inter-dimensional riff in our ocean’s depths, the biblical apocalypse forces mid-grade celebrities to bunker down in James Franco’s house and whine incessantly about […]
We’re the Millers (2013)
September 2, 2013
By Cleaver Patterson. There will always be drawbacks for any actor appearing in a film alongside Jennifer Aniston, the main one being that you shall inevitably have to take second-billing to everyone’s favorite friend. Director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s new comedy We’re the Millers may co-star successful funny man Jason Sudeikis, […]
Blue-Eyed Soulless: the Morgan Spurlock Sellout
August 30, 2013
By Matthew Sorrento. Morgan Spurlock is one of very few documentarians who seem to find constant work. (Others include Alex Gibney, who must have struck Oscar gold with Taxi to the Dark Side, and obviously, Michael Moore.) With his sizable skill, Spurlock has benefited from his onscreen charisma, which he […]
Blue Jasmine, and the Curious Career of Woody Allen
August 29, 2013
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Woody Allen’s latest, Blue Jasmine, has received mixed reviews from the daily critics, who don’t seem to know quite what to make of it. It’s one of Allen’s most serious films to date, and one of his most unforgiving, both of itself, and of society as […]
The Go Doc Project (2013)
August 28, 2013
By Mark James. The Go Doc Project, a new collaboration between writer/director Cory Krueckeberg and lead Tanner Cohen (they worked together previously on the 2008 Were the World Mine), sets up its stakes quickly. Cohen plays Doc, a Columbia near-graduate with a vlog and a ticket to Iowa where he’ll […]
On the Road (2012)
August 27, 2013
By Brandon Konecny. The adaptation of a novel to film is a difficult undertaking. Our judgment of a novel’s cinematic counterpart is, as Robert Stam perceptively points out, profoundly moralistic: we use such words as “infidelity” and “betrayal” to communicate our discontent with a filmic rendering of a text, each […]
Elysium (2013)
August 24, 2013
By Steven Harrison Gibbs. I should begin by stating that I do not regularly indulge in assessing the average narrative film with politics near the forefront of my mind. When it comes to film criticism, I prefer to place emphasis on other aspects that, at least for me, play a […]
Becoming Traviata (2013)
August 21, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. A couple years ago, I traveled to England for an internship and decided that so long as I was on that side of the ocean, I would go ahead and see Malta, Italy, and France as well. I remember stepping off the train into Rome and stumbling […]
The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh (2012)
August 20, 2013
By Cleaver Patterson. Films that sell themselves as horror movies generally fall into one of two camps. They either go for all-out viscerals, leaving little to the viewer’s imagination as they try to outdo what has gone before with evermore graphic and gory visuals, or they rely on subtlety and […]