|Chris Ryba-Tures| When my parents first met, my dad was a Jesuit priest and my mom was studying to be a Catholic nun. While I may have started life as a “Child of the Cloth” I’ve since become an outsider to the Catholic Church. Still, I’m Culturally Catholic (which my wife insists is “not a thing”). … Continue reading
|Chris Polley| I was lucky enough to see David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows in the theater when it was originally released a little under 10 years ago today. At a movie theater that no longer exists, playing hooky from work after lunch but before daycare closed, I was already a bit anxious, being a goody two-shoes… Continue reading
|Allison Vincent| Like so many, when I first saw It Follows, I found it smart, scary, fresh, dreadful, and fascinating. Part of what initially grabbed my attention was the oft-discussed dream logic of the film. Watching it feels like the same relentless, hyper-focused dreams… Continue reading
|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
|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
|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
|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
|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
|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
|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
