|Sophie Durbin| The Keep was a tough sell for me, a Michael Mann fan who fell in love with him through Heat and Thief—on my first watch, I was almost offended by the supernatural plot (I’m fine with the paranormal on film, but keep it out of my Michael Mann features). Of course… Continue reading
|Andrew Neill| 17 years ago, on a frigid night in January 2008, I was in a car packed with friends, speeding up I-29 from Fargo to Grand Forks to see a new release. We would have gone to see it locally, but the theater chain (Marcus) and the distributor (Paramount) were fighting. The film… Continue reading
|Phil Kolas| An ensemble masterpiece, where one dozen of the worst and most violent incarcerated American soldiers are offered a suicide mission in exchange for their freedom. A rotten deal from a rotten wartime government, offered to rotten men, to get them to kill the only type… Continue reading
|Finn Odum| Sometime Before 1944: The US military established a covert demolition squad that later took on the moniker “The Filthy Thirteen,” after they decided to save their bathing water for cooking. Normandy, France, 1944: The Filthy Thirteen were airdropped over the Douve River… Continue reading
|John Costello| Although All Through the Night is primarily a comedy about small-time New York racketeers who become entangled in a spy ring working for the Nazi regime, the slapstick characters take moral positions for community, empathy, and democracy. The movie gives insights… Continue reading
|Dylan Hawthorn| The concept of melodrama has a bad reputation. If I described my sister’s behavior during a conflict as melodramatic, I am suggesting that her reaction is over-the-top and should be dismissed. Furthermore, there’s a reason my brain jumped to citing a… Continue reading
|Malcolm Cooke| For the past few months or so my father has been digging a very large hole in his backyard. It started with some error in the installation of a rain garden I always struggle to comprehend the details of. The contractor said a previous hole that was filled needed to… Continue reading
|Andrew Neill| I’m in a hotel room in Appleton, Wisconsin, and turn on the TV. It’s on CNN, but instead of some talking head feeding the news cycle, there’s a man I recognize but haven’t seen in a long time. He’s sauntering down a narrow street between ancient, eroding buildings and… Continue reading
|Ben Jarman| Up until his death, Stan Lee showed up in a cameo role for every movie that’s part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Even general audiences loved finding him pop up as a postman or security guard. Appearances like this quickly made Stan Lee a household… Continue reading
|John Costello| Two-thirds of the way through Casablanca (1942), the action pauses in Rick’s Café Américain to dwell on three minor characters seated at one of the tables. Instead of another scene involving a pickpocket or a musical number advancing the story, the camera lingers on an elderly couple, the Leuchtags. Carl, a waiter… Continue reading
|MH Rowe| Things are not quite as you remember in Casablanca. Consider before anything else the film’s hellish yet also somewhat corny setting. Here we have the city of Casablanca on the coast of Morrocco only days before Pearl Harbor, December 1941. None of the film’s characters know the fateful Japanese Continue reading
|Chris Ryba-Tures| As I grimly plod into my forties, movie nostalgia has…not so much become a heady escapist drug, so much as an increasingly out-of-body point of fascination. Obviously, because childhood is generally just so easy to wax nostalgic about, but moreover because the… Continue reading
|Bob Aulert| Up in the air, Junior Birdman The Rocketeer (1991) blends nostalgia, adventure, romance, and patriotism into a classic superhero narrative. Set in the golden age of aviation during the late 1930s, it’s an adaptation of Dave Stevens’s comic book series of the same name… Continue reading
|Reid Lemker| What was the first “adult” movie you saw as a kid? For me, the first movie that comes to mind is Where Eagles Dare. I was probably ten or eleven when my dad first showed it to me, and it quickly became a favorite of ours to watch on… Continue reading
|Devin Bee| Where Eagles Dare is a film of clashes. The story sounds simple enough: during World War II, an American general is held captive by Nazis in a Bavarian castle. An elite squad of Allied soldiers—six British and one American—are tasked with infiltrating the castle and saving the… Continue reading
|Penny Folger| Hitler stands in a town square in Poland while dumbfounded townspeople encircle him, looking as though they’re witnessing a talking polar bear, or perhaps something much more absurd and dangerous. A small girl in the crowd suddenly pipes up, “May I have… Continue reading
|Chris Ryba-Tures| It’s taken me a long, long time to admit this to myself: hating stuff isn’t very cool. Hating something, especially when you make that hate part of your personality, a talking point at parties, a fulcrum to get a rise out of folks, is pretty tedious, exhausting, and boring, isn’t it? Continue reading
|Dan McCabe| I recently visited New York, and as I walked along West 45th Street through its famous theater district, I couldn’t help but imagine the marquees that came and went from the Great White Way over the last century. One such show, opening in 1959, was The Sound of Music Continue reading
|Allison Vincent| When we first started dating, my wife worked at a puzzle room in St. Paul, MN. One of the many perks of such a venture is that I got to play-test rooms occasionally. One such room was heavily influenced by a certain wizarding world created by She-Who-Must-Not-… Continue reading
|Lucas Hardwick| ***Only the penitent man will admit to and apologize for the spoilers ahead.*** The condition of the nine-year-old boy is a defining time for a kid, let alone an entire generation from that point forward. Teetering on the precipice of adolescence, still too young to be… Continue reading
|Devin Bee| During his brief retirement from directing movies—between Behind the Candelabra (2013) and Logan Lucky (2017)—Steven Soderbergh was doing some of his most exciting work. He acted as director, editor, cinematographer, and primary camera operator for all 20… Continue reading
|Lucas Hardwick| The views expressed in the article regarding Doritos, flavored booze, and India Pale Ales do not reflect those of the (volunteer) staff of Trylon Cinema, Perisphere Blog, most of Portland, Austin, Louisville, Jeremy S. from Junior year 21st Century Class at Hopkins… Continue reading
|Brad Bellatti| For the better part of 15 years, the above image of Chaplin has bothered me. No matter how many times I watch this sequence, the finale of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) shakes me up. I’ve tried many times to find the right words to express this sentiment… Continue reading
|Ed Dykhuizen| During the first half of the twentieth century, there was no bigger star than Charlie Chaplin. At a very young age he rose from English music halls to American comedy shorts. His defining character The Little Tramp debuted in only his second film, the 1914 Keystone… Continue reading
