|Patrick Clifford| This isn’t going to be easy to write. Writing about drinking is hard. And The Lost Weekend isn’t just a movie about drinking. It’s a movie about writing about drinking. Writing and drinking have always been joined at the hip. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Stephen King— Continue reading
|Jackson Stern| Like many self-described “film nerds”, I grew up with a great admiration for the work of Billy Wilder. Around the time I was thirteen or fourteen, I was watching Sunset Boulevard monthly, completely enraptured by the witty dialogue, the strangeness of it… Continue reading
|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
|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
|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
|Matthew Christensen| I teach film and theatre at an international high school in Japan, and have spent the last few days in tech rehearsals for our theater club’s production of Our Town. I have pulled out what little hair I have in my head handling last-minute crises—a locked door… Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| I lived in my last apartment for five years and ten months. When I was allowed to work from home at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, my apartment was the center of my universe. I got out plenty, taking long walks and bike rides and drives around the city. Still… Continue reading
