Populist Fables: Law and Order and The Beast of the City

By Geoff Mayer. The below is excerpted from Hollywood’s Melodramatic Imagination: Film Noir, the Western and Other Genres from the 1920s to the 1950s (McFarland Publishers) by Geoff Mayer. All rights reserved. While sensational melodrama is structured as a fundamental bipolar clash between moral absolutes, the specific moral, political and […]

Sting in the Tail: Filmmaker Avalon Fast on Honeycomb (Slamdance)

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. These girls were actively looking for a way out, and to create separation between themselves and the world they gladly left behind. I think they felt more comfortable living in their new world the way they wanted, and controlling when others were allowed to experience and judge […]

A Big Slice of Fondness: Lisa Hurwitz’s The Automat

By Elias Savada. The Automat shouldn’t be looked at as a eulogy [1902-1991], but as a celebration of its long and mostly successful life.” “The food was delicious…the price was right.” So says the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in Lisa Hurwitz’s affectionate look at the lost era […]