|Nick Kouhi| It’s easy to label Brian De Palma’s work as an extended exercise in voyeurism. But in a career spanning over half a century, the enfant terrible of the New Hollywood has transcended charges of Hitchockian pastiche with his perspicaciously (and…. Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| I cannot escape the reach of Ancient Greek theater. The last piece I wrote for Perisphere was about Mai Zetterling’s The Girls and a fictional production of Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata. It turns out a large part of director Brian DePalma’s inspiration for… Continue reading
|Yuval Klein| Three students and a chaperone at an all-girls college disappear during a field trip at Hanging Rock, an Australian former volcano that is 6.25 million years old. The repercussions and philosophical symbols entice viewers for the latter part of the film. Much of the film is… Continue reading
|Sophie Durbin| I first learned about Picnic at Hanging Rock from the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (which I’ve been glued to for two years) and was instantly intrigued. I finally saw it yesterday after several failed attempts on Youtube. On a visual level, the.. Continue reading
|Michael Wellvang| There’s something about shopping that makes middle-aged men snap. Maybe it goes against the whole hunter-gatherer thing where men kill and women do everything else. There’s nothing to hunt for in a store. Going shopping implies you don’t already… Continue reading
|Lucas Hardwick| Beware: Spoilers Ahead. Believe it or not, instead of earning money by writing for a living, I actually have a real, honest-to-God day job of the blue-collar persuasion where I recently found myself engaged in the spirited pastime of bitching about work with a colleague… Continue reading
|Chris Ryba-Tures| “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another.” Walter Benjamin Continue reading
|Cole Seidl| It is not particularly difficult to find films of resistance, or films in which colonized subjects fight back, asserting their rights and their refusal to go along peaceably with the agenda of their colonizers. Seek out the cinema of any colonized people and there will be many… Continue reading
|Matthew Lambert| There’s a quintessential moment of madness in the 1974 low-budget horror film The Cars That Ate Paris that is seared into my brain. It’s Charlie (played by the ultimate Australian character actor Bruce Spence) standing outside his fortress of wrecked cars, blood… Continue reading
|MH Rowe| One triumph of Peter Weir’s Witness (1985) is its sense of dreamy metaphor. The score, the cinematography, the simmer of desire between its lead characters, John Book (Harrison Ford) and Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis), and the situation of a hard-bitten Philadelphia Continue reading
