|Reid Lemker| My dad had a rule about film adaptations. He always told my sister and me to “read the book first” when we were kids. These days, I don’t always heed this advice. However, watching John Farrow’s 1948 film The Big Clock, after reading the 1946 Kenneth Fearing novel of the same… Continue reading
|Penny Folger| It’s difficult to measure the kind of influence a film like Gun Crazy has had. Like so many great films, it flopped upon its initial release in 1950. It was the only movie ever made by its B-movie producers, the King Brothers, that actually lost money. The industry thought of… Continue reading
|Chris Polley| Planting a flagpole in the ground? That’s a phallus. Shredding a guitar on stage? That’s a phallus. Cocking a revolver and pointing it at a cashier with a lusty grin of power and control on your face, side by side with your gun-toting lover? You better believe that’s a phallus. Continue reading
|Malcolm Cooke| Steven Larsen and Peter Bruhn met through their mailman. An avid sports fan, he assumed that two men hailing from Wisconsin must be Packers fans and encouraged them to meet. But when they finally got together to watch… Continue reading
|Olivia Fredrickson| The cinema of Maya Deren without a doubt captures not only the intrinsic reflections of her consistently shifting identity as a woman and artist, but also the labyrinthic inner workings of the self and psyche. Both of these crucial elements of her cinema and identity… Continue reading
|Sophie Durbin| Please bear with me as I begin this piece with (yes) a quick detour. I’ve always been fascinated by Low Production Values. I capitalize these words because I thought they were an official proper noun for an actual artistic style for many years. As a kid, I was fascinated by… Continue reading
|Nate Logsdon| Fate’s Finger Fate can put the finger on you or me. Awful chump to throw away all that dough. No. Not yet, darling. Tomorrow. Maybe. Why you dope. Where did you leave his body? Suppose he doesn’t die… He will, I know. Fate can put the finger on you or me. Another one… Continue reading
|John Costello| I want to tell you why almost everyone turns out to be a Nazi collaborator in Ministry of Fear (1944), a wartime thriller set during the London Blitz. I want to tell you who knows they are helping the Nazis, and who acts without understanding they’re part of a larger… Continue reading
|MH Rowe| The Hollywood thrillers that Fritz Lang made after leaving Nazi Germany—and after making there such classics as Metropolis (1927) and M (1931)—tend to be likable because they’re unmoved by the tyrannical demand that films ought to make complete sense. Continue reading
|Lucas Hardwick| **Mild spoilers ahead*** My career as a writer is successful only in the sense that I get to do it; my work is published here and there, and maybe a few hundred people read it, chuckle, and manage to get something out of it—some of it right here on this very blog. But… Continue reading
