|Ben Desbois| My mom still lives in the house I grew up in. Visitors often refer to it as a museum because of how well it preserves the past. In the dining room, there is still a mural of a dragon burning down a mountain village which I painted when I was eight. It’s hard in today’s… Continue reading
|Dan McCabe| Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures, had a problem. Director Frank Capra, arguably the person keeping the lights on at Columbia, had a great script based on a popular short story. The issue? Directors and scripts didn’t sell movies during the Golden Age… Continue reading
|Jackson Stern| As a young man, I loved a good romance. Two people walking alone until, usually without warning, they’re cosmically entwined forever under a setting sun. It’s a pretty picture to see, especially when it features two unmistakably beautiful people whose smiles melt your… Continue reading
|Penny Folger| “You can never go fast enough,” declares James Taylor’s character in Two-Lane Blacktop, known here simply as The Driver. He occupies a world where he and his righthand man, The Mechanic, played by original Beach Boys’ drummer Dennis Wilson, make their living… Continue reading
|Wil McMillen| Two-Lane Blacktop is a curious, dense race movie in which almost no racing actually happens. Instead, the film is haunted by the passage of time, by the feeling that life has passed you by, and ultimately, by death itself. Tragically, for three of the film’s actors, those themes would become reality sooner… Continue reading
|Victoria Breshears| Francesco Rosi’s 1976 political thriller Illustrious Corpses begins with us watching a high court judge move past rows of clothed, desiccated mummies within the Capuchin Catacombs. While this opening scene signals mortality to be an important theme for the movie… Continue reading
|Ben Tuthill| In late 1994, high off the box office fumes of Speed, Keanu Reeves took a break from movies to play Hamlet in a two-month run for the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg. Opening night was by all accounts a disaster, but Reeves found his nerve in the coming weeks… Continue reading
|Abraham Tueber| Though it embarrasses me to admit it, I own just a single DVD. At one time, I had many more I could proudly hold in my hands. Now, sheaves of plastic collect dust in my parents’ basement, entombing masterpieces like Spy Kids, Ice Age, and Akeelah and the Bee… Continue reading
|Luis Lopez| Gregory Nava will be at the Trylon in person and I plan to ask him if he shot a version of El Norte in which Enrique’s sister Rosa survives at the end. She dies after a solo teardrop escapes her body that’s wrapped in a white hospital gown adorned with… Continue reading
|Ben Tuthill| Maybe nothing has raised the moviegoing populace to space-brain meta-awareness more than the sequel. The sequel presents itself as a new window into an already established cinematic universe, but in reality it exposes the moviemaking infrastructure to which that… Continue reading
|Cole Seidl| There’s a very specific existential crisis that happens to many film students. It occurs with such frequency as to almost feel like a cliché. You spend 4 years drowning in film. Film history, film theory, film production, film conversations. Then, you suddenly find yourself… Continue reading
|Amelia Foster| In an era when Minneapolis desperately needs courageous leadership, Jacob Frey fails us again and again. During Operation Metro Surge, he took a press tour when he should have been protecting us from abduction and murder by ICE agents. He has literally run from… Continue reading
|Louis Gagnon| On July 8th, St. Paul mayor Khaoly Her announced her plan to evict the city’s homeless encampments. This is set to begin on August 5th. Upwards of 400 people will be displaced and have their belongings confiscated by the cleaning crews. The city is going ahead… Continue reading
|Devin Warner| Note: There are many links to Muppet related material that I am referencing. You do not need to see them to understand this piece but should watch them because they are all delightful. The Muppet Movie starts with the camera descending into the swamp as we… Continue reading
|Dan Howard| Dom DeLuise, James Coburn, Madeline Khan, Telly Savalas, Carol Kane, Paul Williams, Milton Berle, Elliot Gould, Edgar Bergen (and Charlie), Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, Cloris Lechman, and Orson Welles! Talk about an… Continue reading
|Ben Jarman| We always went to Taco Bell for lunch in a 1989 Honda Civic. Four or five other teens were stuffed in the car, some sitting on laps, just to flee class and get a bite to eat. Steak soft tacos and bean burritos were my thing, but I was there for something else: my classmate… Continue reading
|Chris Polley| My spouse often teases me for being drawn to films where “nothing really happens and then the bottom drops out from the main character’s life.” She’s not wrong. After all, right now, I have Eyes Without a Face, Sirāt, and Mikey & Nicky in my top four on Letterboxd… Continue reading
| Sophie Durbin | Wanda plays at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, July 26th, through Tuesday, July 28th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org. MR. DENNIS: You don’t want anything, you won’t have anything. You don’t have anything, you’re nothing. Might as well be dead. You’re not… Continue reading
|Dan McCabe| “Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much,” Orson Welles says towards the end of F for Fake (1973) as he gazes upon Chartres Cathedral, which he describes as a great, unsigned masterpiece. F for Fake asks questions about the importance (or lack thereof)… Continue reading
|Cole Seidl| The 10th annual Nitrate Picture Show in Rochester, New York didn’t announce a single film of its program before the festival began on June 4th. They didn’t need to—tickets had sold out within a week of going on sale in January. People, it seems, didn’t care what the program… Continue reading
|Rachel Buhman| “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” rings out as the most clangy criticism of rom-coms. Funny enough, it’s one of film’s most famous romantic characters, Kathy Selden, that utters those words in Singin’ in the Rain. Just before she admits to actually seeing a few of her… Continue reading
|Dan Howard| Oftentimes, it feels like younger people have been told all our lives by our elders to “never get old” and to appreciate the time we have while we have it. When we see how some people become more cynical with age, it lessens any desire to get that old. I believe we’ve all had our fair share of encountering jaded folks… Continue reading
|Finn Odum| I frequently dream about driving a car that’s lost control. In these dreams, the driver is missing, and I am left trying to navigate a vehicle from the backseat. Usually, the car is in peril. I’m flying down a hill. Another car is in the way. I’m back in Milwaukee, driving down… Continue reading
|Lucas Hardwick| ***Spoiler alert for The Thing and The Thing and a few other films*** When I was a kid my dad always said that if there was ever a World War III, he wanted the first bomb to drop on our house. He said it was because he… Continue reading
|Riccardo Williams| John Carpenter’s The Thing, released in 1982, has since achieved the status of horror legend, in many ways eclipsing the book it’s based on, Who Goes There written by John W. Campbell Jr. There’s a strong argument to be made that it overtakes the previous adaptation… Continue reading
|Ryan Sanderson| Before writing about The World’s End, I embarked on my own nostalgic voyage, revisiting three of my favorite films from an earlier chapter of my life. Shaun of the Dead came out my sophomore year of high school. The summer between high school and… Continue reading
|Rachel Buhman| The following is to be read in that classic movie trailer voice, you know the one. In a world where an alternative girl is just a pair of glasses and a book, Diane Lane dares to be a stain. Sitting down for Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains brings a buzzing excitement that anticipates the rush of something new… Continue reading
|Mimi Huelster| The start of Linda Linda Linda (2005) is rife with misunderstandings. A series of interpersonal blunders leads to the dissolution of a high school band, leaving students Kei (Yuu Kashii), Kyoko (Aki Maeda), and Nozomi (Shiori Sekine)… Continue reading
|Ben Jarman| The movie Hot Fuzz has many references to 80s and 90s action films and many of these films had Nintendo video game adaptations. The following pages are an attempt to create a strategy guide for an 8-bit Hot Fuzz adaptation that does not exist. Just imagine Edgar Wright’s movie… Continue reading
|Devin Warner| There’s something really special about the homage film. It wasn’t until rewatching Hot Fuzz for my Perisphere article on Shakedown that I realized a lot of my favorite movies growing up were the homage films. That genre is something that I feel taps into that… Continue reading
|Nicole Rojas-Oltmanns| It may have been the video game, Plants vs Zombies (2009), that made kids fall in love with the undead. Ever since, there has been a slew of inappropriate and almost appropriate zombie content directed at young people. But zombies are scary as shit. They are… Continue reading
|Allison Vincent| I love comedy. If theater or filmmaking is cooking then comedy, to me, is the baking. It’s all about precision and, most importantly, timing. I cut my comedic teeth on Looney Tunes, The Three Stooges, Mr. Bean, and Mel Brooks movies. My grandmother would take me to used book Continue reading
|Lucille Hanson| Around February or March 2019, I was at an interview for a local filming company and in their lobby, I spotted the Spring program for the Trylon. I flipped through it and was blown away. It was the first time I had ever seen a movie theater run nothing but older movies. Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| For a film reviewer, I have a big blind spot when it comes to Asian cinema. I enjoy the occasional Bollywood musical, and the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival keeps me up to date on the Middle Eastern movie scene. I am pretty ignorant of what’s going on… Continue reading
|Zach Staads| A quick note up top, this is one of my all-time favorite movies and I highly recommend you see it if you haven’t yet. Buy your tickets now, don’t wait. I have oft spoken about my love of theatricality in film (see my article on Kuroneko’s theatrical lighting style her)… Continue reading
|Chris Polley| Borders are fake, but people are real. Director Carol Reed knew this better than most others who have trafficked in spy thrillers and political noir over the years. And while The Man Between is typically less regarded than his prior masterpieces The Third Man… Continue reading
|Chris Polley| Breaking up families, the oppressed becoming the oppressor, the government sanctioning open and wanton cruelty on the streets—sound familiar? When I got offered the chance to write about Kenji Mizoguchi’s folktale-inspired 1954 epic Sansho the Bailiff this past winter amid Operation Metro Surge and just weeks after the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, I immediately felt the connection. It was deep in my bones. Continue reading
|Dan Howard| Since the end of World War II, hundreds of, if not over a thousand, films have been made about it, capturing varying themes from fighting on the front lines, infiltrating the Third Reich, the effect of the war on innocent bystanders, etc. Yet, the WWII films I find myself drawn to are… Continue reading
|Penny Folger| Family Plot, Alfred Hitchcock’s final feature film, turns 50 this year, and while often overlooked, it’s a delightful and, dare I say, light comedy? But how could the director so often associated with murder have made something… cute? (Fortunately… Continue reading
|Patrick Clifford| In the 1976 film Family Plot, the word plot refers to a piece of land where a family is seemingly buried. The family who owns the plot is the Shoebridge family. Both details say very little about the “storyline” definition of plot. But Family Plot is a film by Alfred Hitchcock… Continue reading
