|Lucas Hardwick| The radical conservative is capable of some of the best science-fiction known to mankind. The evidence has never been clearer than in the wake of the Trump administration and the recent COVID pandemic that saw people avoiding the Coronavirus vaccines Continue reading
|Jay Ditzer| 1. Let Me Tell You What Melba Toast Is Packin’ Right Here David pulled up to Jan’s house 45 minutes later than he had said he would and beeped the horn. His car stereo was audible inside the house. “He’s here,” Jan said while peeking through the blinds. Continue reading
|Veda Lawrence| When Corky is recruiting Clifford, the camera pans to a rifle hanging on the wall. By the end of the credits, Chekhov rolls in his grave, bemoaning this blue-balling of the imperative. The rifle never shoots, the idea is never revisited. Continue reading
|Matt Clark| A professional thief left for dead after a job gone sour pursues the people who betrayed him and extracts his payback, no matter the collateral damage. It’s a classic hardboiled scenario and one that practically exploded from the pages of The Hunter, the first of 24… Continue reading
|Kevin Maher| John Boorman’s 1967 fever dream Point Blank has often been cited as the catalyst for the neo-noir movement that has ebbed and flowed for more than 50 years. Adapted from the Donald E. Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) novel called The Hunter… Continue reading
|Matthew Tchepikova-Treon| The year: Meiji 7 (1874). Inside a Tokyo prison during a snowstorm, we hear sharp winds, a dying woman’s anguished howling, and the cries of a newborn baby girl: Yuki. Outside, through a wood-barred window, white snow falls… Continue reading
|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… Continue reading
|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… Continue reading
|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. Continue reading
|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… Continue reading
|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… Continue reading
|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… Continue reading
|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. Continue reading
|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… Continue reading
|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. Continue reading
|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. Continue reading
|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… Continue reading
|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… Continue reading
|Eli Holm| Nobody does credits like Hitchcock. His masterpiece Marnie opens with a story book-style credit sequence, flipping through pages of cast member names with the always evolving score dominating the soundscape. Studying a single frame of the credits… Continue reading
|Luke Mosher| Franz Kafka’s 1925 novel The Trial begins like this: “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” There it is—the whole maddening tale, captured in a sentence. Continue reading
|Becky Welander| I remember my dad telling me that Grace Kelly had been his mother Grace’s favorite movie star. He also said that my grandma wasn’t a fan of Prince Rainier and felt he wasn’t good enough for Grace. She also regretted Kelly’s decision to quit acting when she got married. Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| Does anyone who enjoys classic Hollywood films get sick of talking about Edith Head? I’m sure those people exist, but I’m not one of them. I’m actually a bigger fan of Head’s work styling Kim Novak in Vertigo, but if you want to discuss Head and Hitchcock, To Catch a… Continue reading
|Matthew Lambert| La Vie Rêvée (The Dream Life), a revolutionary 1972 Canadian feminist film directed by Mireille Dansereau, follows the everyday life of Isabelle (Liliane Lemaitre-Auger) and Virginie (Veronqiue Le Flaguais) in Quebec. The movie is highly… Continue reading
|Dylan Walker| “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.” As the camera passes through a gate and roves through the charred Manderley estate in the opening shot of the 1940 classic Rebecca, I am suddenly taken back in time as if I were Joan Fontaine’s narrator. Continue reading
|Jake Rudegeair| Float down the overgrown drive, supernatural dreamer, until you come upon the “desolate shell” of Manderley. This classic haunted house holds up the deceits and revelations of Rebecca, Hitchcock’s Best Picture winner from 1940, based on the novel by… Continue reading
|Rowan A. Smith| The Wild Bunch was a movie that for many years sat for me in a category most film-lovers are very familiar with: “I’ll get to it.” When I was a teenager, I watched a lot of the most beloved Westerns and didn’t find many I enjoyed. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties… Continue reading
|Brogan Earney| Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch has been a staple in American cinema since its release in 1969. Mostly known for its aggressive violence and its intense style of editing, the film pioneered a new age of filmmaking and is often referred to as the day American cinema… Continue reading
|Bob Aulert| Not many things from 1988 stand up well in the 21st century. Chevy Chase hosted the Oscars that year, for heaven’s sake. But Patti Rocks, a quiet film of depth and complexity, is just as powerful and perceptive today as it was 35 years ago. Continue reading
|John Moret| It can be easy to ignore or disregard movies because you haven’t heard of them before. I certainly do it all the time. It often takes the recommendation of a friend I trust, a known director, actor, distributor, etc. to spark my interest. The problem is, because there are… Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| The 39 Steps is a movie with an interesting cast of characters, especially compared to the book Hitchcock used for inspiration. The film is based off the similarly-named The Thirty-Nine Steps by Scotsman John Buchan (the first Baron Tweedsmuir if you’re fancy). Continue reading
|Dan Howard| Years ago, I had the privilege of meeting the actor Tommy Flanagan at a charity event. I was already a fan of Sons of Anarchy (in which Flanagan appears), and he was everything I’d hoped: kind, humble, and down-to-earth. It was after this meeting that I heard about… Continue reading
|Dylan Walker| While I’m not really a video game person, I’ve been intrigued by The Last of Us franchise thanks to a coworker who sings its praises, positive reviews of the HBO show, and a mild crush I’ve developed on Pedro Pascal. So, the other day, I decided to spend some time… Continue reading
|Matthew Lambert| Ratcatcher, the debut film from acclaimed director Lynne Ramsay, depicts severe poverty for a community in 1970s Scotland in a way that doesn’t glamorize nor attempt any sort of comfort for the viewer. The film follows James, a teenager living in a housing… Continue reading
|Natalie Marlin| A flashing light fades in, and the first thing we see is her face, staring out past the camera. It’s impossible to know what she’s thinking. It’s impossible to know where her focus lies, or if her eyes are merely glazing over in a kind of catatonia. Continue reading
|Chris Polley| “Every man that looks at you is a menace,” says runaway Nazi Alexander Sebastian (played by Claude Rains), the third wheel to and ultimate mark of the American power couple (played by Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman) at the center of Alfred Hitchcock’s… Continue reading
|Nick Kouhi| François Truffaut once claimed that every director’s film is a remake, more or less, of their first feature. Such an assertion suggests that to truly understand any auteur’s intentions, one must return to the crucible from which their art was forged. Continue reading
|Chris Ryba-Tures| I was about five the summer the last of my grandparents died. All four died over two years, alternating sides of the family. In our house death wasn’t just a teary conversation to have with the kids after the family parakeet dies. It was a force that rendered my… Continue reading
|Daniel McCabe| Watership Down. The name conjures contrasting images of adorable rabbits and their violent, authoritarian society. Reams of ink and pixels have been expended discussing the film’s timeless plot and emotionally gripping images. It also holds a unique place in the history… Continue reading
|Azra Thakur| Wendy Ide, a film critic for The Guardian, was recently critical of films running over three hours, as she argued that films in the pandemic-times we continue to live in should be limited in their running length: “No film needs to be longer than three hours.” Continue reading
|Lucas Hardwick| If you were to drive by L.A.’s Anderson Police Precinct 13 in a modern day alternate reality, you’d find a district simply known as The Precinct, vibrating with hipsters in an entirely gentrified neighborhood surrounded by condos housing Instagram influencers and artsy… Continue reading
