
All I Know is Violence – The False Catharsis of Lady Snowblood
|Rowan Smith| Despite my strong desire to fight against the impulse throughout my teens and twenties, I’ve always been governed more by emotion than logic. I cannot deny that I become bloodthirsty when I am wronged, despite the god knows how many revenge-centric films...

A Librarian in Hot Pants, a Side Order of House Music, and a Seltzer, Please
|Becky Welander| I was re-watching some of the early seasons of Project Runway recently, discovering that in Season 6, Episode 7, Michael Kors comments with disgust that one of the designs looked like a librarian from 1979. Michael Kors is certainly not the first or the last person...

Shadow of “Les Vampires”: Irma Vep
|Yuval Klein| Viewers are immediately inundated with the multitudinous clamor of pre-production for an independent French film. It is somewhat humorous, somewhat curious, and somewhat stress-inducing. Then, Maggie Cheung enters the room.

Irma Vep
|Eli Holm| Some of the earliest films in the cinematic canon have acquired an elevated status; they’re put on a pedestal and deemed immortal pieces of art and influence. But I'm not here to talk about these products, I'm here to talk about the process. That's what director Olivier Assayas does...

No Country for Old Men: Ride the High Country (1962) and The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
|MH Rowe| The most important thing in a Sam Peckinpah western is the automobile. Cars are the essential metaphor, at least when it comes to his crudely grand and murderous epic The Wild Bunch (1969), but also when you consider his first classic film Ride the High Country...

Movie Stars, Maggie Cheung, and The Heroic Trio
|Azra Thakur| I watched my first Maggie Cheung film, In the Mood for Love (2000), near the start of the pandemic at home. I didn’t read much about it beforehand (the best way to watch films) and was mesmerized as Maggie Cheung appeared scene after scene in print after gorgeous print...

In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai’s Silent Dance: Where Image Meets Flesh in Fifteen Frames
|Casey Jarrin| The erotics of a single finger / pressing the doorbell / slowly / Quiet intimacies of space / slender hands graze / a forgotten doorframe / Wardrobes / lifted by ropes / A slash of fabric / midnights of rain / Every frame: a sigh / a wish held close / a silent exchange.

Scent, Sense, and Senselessness in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
|Sophie Durbin| Bennie (Warren Oates) drives across the Mexican countryside in a sweaty white suit stained with blood and dirt. Gasping for air, he swats flies from his passenger, a decaying human head in a burlap sack. He’s speaking to the head as if it’s the most normal...

A Head’s Tale: The Emotional Journey of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
|Lucas Hardwick| Everyone has a head and we’re all kind of obsessed with them; so obsessed, in fact, that the conceit of removing it forcefully will never not be the most macabre form of dismemberment. After all, decapitation was a rather popular crime deterrent in the Dark Ages.

Stardust and the Quest for Childhood Wonder
|Finn Odum| Since the dawn of time—which began either in a rural Tennessee farmhouse or a rented duplex in Milwaukee—I have been a movie person. My early childhood memories overlap with scenes from A Bug’s Life, A Night at the Opera, and Air Bud. Some of the...

Sick Day Story Allegory: The Princess Bride Integrates Grief on the Sly
|Jake Rudegeair| Forget everything you know about The Princess Bride.
It won’t be easy. Rob Reiner’s hilarious classic from 1987 is fused to our collective filmic memory like a sixth finger. It would be like asking you to forget your favorite grade school teacher or your first crush.

Archetypes at Sea: The Poseidon Adventure
|Lucas Vonasek| It’s New Year’s Eve, 1972. You find yourself on a luxurious cruise ship steaming somewhere across the Atlantic Ocean. The chandelier in the ballroom swings over your head in concert with the blue and heaving water that’s turning more and more brumous...