|Matt Clark| For the last 15 years, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has essentially been in the Tom Cruise business. Eight of the ten pictures that list McQuarrie as a writer and the entirety of his directorial output (most of which now consists of Mission: Impossible films… Continue reading
|MH Rowe| Thank you for coming today. I want to say a few words about the strangeness of a film called The Usual Suspects, which was released in 1995 and over the course of the last 30 years has become a politely or even well-regarded classic of the “neo-noir” crime genre… Continue reading
|Chris Polley| Sometimes this place feels like a prison” is a sentiment I hear at least once every few years as a public school teacher—from students, yes, but also at least twice from fellow teachers. It’s also a haven for many kids who lack stability and routine at home. And yet it remains a source of so much stress and so… Continue reading
|Matt Clark| During the 1970s peak of kung fu film popularity, films from the Shaw Brothers’ legendary studio were known for lavish sets, period detail, and often outrageous kung fu styles. Rival studio, Golden Harvest, was primarily known for promoting international sensation… Continue reading
|Ben Jarman| Here is a new take from my mom on the film Shaolin vs Lama. The goal here again is to introduce her to genres she is not interested in and gather her thoughts. She is a movie “buff”, but she doesn’t venture much into genre films. Martial arts movies are definitely not her thing. She can handle a horror movie… Continue reading
|Harry Mackin| Spoilers for His Motorbike, Her Island—watch the movie before you read this! We meet several different versions of His Motorbike, Her Island’s protagonist, Koh. First, we meet Koh the narrator. This Koh begins his narration immediately following the opening images of the film, when an appropriately… Continue reading
|Jake Rudegeair| Yeah guys, this film has motorcycles. And lots of other stuff too. Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s His Motorbike, Her Island (1986) is a treasure from the annals of motorcycle cinema, bent with nostalgic longing, light on its feet, washing between full color and monochrome classic. Continue reading
|Chris Ryba-Tures| Y’all. After, like, 25 years of waiting, hoping, dreaming, I finally get to see Tom Waits in concert! Some of you have probably been waiting even longer. Don’t worry, you can come too. Get your ticket to see the mysterious junkyard troubadour, the skid-row Cyrano, Continue reading
|Ryan Sanderson| In the first few minutes of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic, Breathless, Parisian bad boy Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) shoots a cop. The moment-as-scripted is very familiar. It’s a classic Hollywood film noir trope—the edgy criminal crosses a boundary from… Continue reading
|Jackson Stern| Some of the best songs you can listen to when you’re at your lowest are the loneliest ones. When I was near the end of high school, I got my heart broken in a few different ways, like a lot of people do at that age, and I’d go for these long drives. Almost every day after school Continue reading
