A Magnetic Mystery: David Lynch’s Lost Highway

By Jeremy Carr. Lynch at his storytelling best.” David Lynch can tell a pretty standard story when he wants to. While films like The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and The Straight Story (1999) surely have their moments of classically “Lynchian” eccentricity, their fundamental plots unfold along relatively orthodox […]

A Worthy Rediscovery: Bill Duke’s Deep Cover (Criterion Collection)

Bill Duke’s 1991 neo-noir Deep Cover finding a home at the Criterion Collection gives the film the communal artistic reverence that it has always richly deserved. And there lies the bittersweet taste of acceptance.” By Johnnie Hobbs III. “So gather ’round as I run it down, and unravel my pedigree…” […]

Reinforced Perspective: Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974)

By Jeremy Carr. Pakula adopts an accordingly striking compositional tension throughout the picture, isolating portions of the frame and dwarfing individuals in an abstract expanse, suggesting both a voyeuristic perspective and an unnerving environmental apprehension.” It might be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when being a […]

A Western by Any Other Name: Destry Rides Again (Criterion Collection)

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. […]