Playing the Fool
|Doug Carmody| Bong Joon-ho’s The Host opens to scenes of tension and tragedy. First, in a politically overt sequence, an American doctor forces a Korean doctor to dump formaldehyde… Continue reading
Author: Olga Tchepikova-Treon
The Rip Van Winkle-Level Sleeper
|Hannah Baxter| How does a movie end up in front of theater audiences? Best case scenario: it’s the product of a major studio, with big stars, a respected director, and/or superheroes. The studio will likely handle distribution and marketing; if not, distributors will pay handsomely Continue reading
Back to the Future: Michael Roemer’s Nothing but a Man
|Nazeeh Alghazawneh| The idea of someone “being ahead of their time,” whether it be an artist, an author, an activist etc., is kind of paradoxical. The phrase implies that broad social, philosophical or political landscapes will change inevitably, develop autonomously, independently of… Continue reading
I Feel You, Man: Ridley Scott’s The Duellists
|MH Rowe| Of course we’re supposed to condescend to the idea of a duel. To imagine two people—two men—agreeing to mortal combat with guns or swords over a breach of honor strikes the contemporary and perhaps cynical observer as so fussily absurd, so absurdly dramatic, and so male, that we… Continue reading
Harvey, the Haughty Hussar
|Alex Kies| In 1977, two years after Stanley Kubrick released Barry Lyndon, Ridley Scott made his filmmaking debut with The Duelists, his own artfully shot Napoleonic epic about the inner lives of petty European men played by incongruously cast Americans. Last year, Scott made… Continue reading
A Whine and a Whimper: The Death of Law Enforcement’s Lionization in James Mangold’s Cop Land
|Chris Polley| There’s a certain built-in legacy in the alliterative phrase “corrupt cop” that belies its own linguistic paradox (or, perhaps, even its redundancy). The rogue detective, the rule-breaking sheriff, and the trigger-happy officer: even before modern American history… Continue reading
The Museum of Home Video’s Ring, Ring: a Doorbell Cam Fantasia is Coming to Town! Some Context on Bret Berg’s MOHV from a Fellow Los Angeleno Who Witnessed its Inception
|Penny Folger| The Museum of Home Video is an online streaming show that took flight during the pandemic and seems to have created an empire. Started by Los Angeleno film programmer/distributor Brett Berg, it takes place at museumofhomevideo.com at 7:30 pm PST most Tuesday evenings. Since its inception in July… Continue reading
Why Black Narcissus is a Haunted House Movie
|Sophie Durbin| In the typical haunted house movie, the protagonist and their loved ones move into a house and stay put despite the fact that it has a million red flags (creepy caretaker, suspicious sounds at night, blood oozing from the elevators…). By the time the entire social order of the film collapses… Continue reading
Bad Lieutenant: Make Perfect My Imperfections
|Michael Wellvang| By the mid-1980s, public perception of films “rated X” had shifted radically. First introduced in 1968 by the Motion Picture Association of America, the rating simply stated a patron should be at least sixteen to watch a particular movie. Now it just meant smut. So the MPAA… Continue reading
Your Forgiveness Will Leave Blood in its Wake
|Finn Odum| Last November, I learned that the guy who made the completely mid Body Snatchers and King of New York is the same guy who made Bad Lieutenant. This knowledge came to me against my will, as I was quite content not knowing anything else about… Continue reading