|Ryan Sanderson| I didn’t fall for Scorsese initially, the same way I did for his contemporaries. Raging Bull left me cold. I hated the characters in Goodfellas too much to really latch on. Make no mistake—I encountered plenty of toxic masculinity in adolescence, just a brand that disguised… Continue reading
|Hannah Baxter| 1917 (2019) was not the first project on which director Sam Mendes collaborated with cinematographer Roger Deakins.1 It’s not even the first war story they made together: that would be Jarhead (2005), a film that makes an interesting counterpoint to 1917. The latter film… Continue reading
|Nicole Rojas-Oltmann| You may have noticed the influx of one-shot and long-shot films in the past two decades. We have camera technology to thank for this. Now film can be made in one go. You know, like theatre has always been done. One-shot and long-shot cinematography pose… Continue reading
|Benjamin Jarman| “Image matters most. We have to put on a great show. An eye for an eye. This is the age of the media. The media got us. Now we get back at them.” These are the first lines of dialogue recited by actress Kelly Chen in Johnnie To’s 2004 crime film, Breaking News. Chen Continue reading
|Matt Lambert| By the time Children of Men plays at the Trylon, my son might be born. It will be my wife and I’s first child. It’s something we’ve waffled on in our marriage for many years. The decision to bring life into the world has changed drastically as I’ve grown older. When I was younger, I thought the idea of… Continue reading
|Nazeeh Alghazawneh| Propaganda is a funny thing to be afraid of because it’s uniquely man-made, and therefore not real. It only exists along the periphery of chasing omniscience—an impossibility that grants salvation, the liberation that keeps us from killing each other. Continue reading
|Jasper Nordin| On July 26, 1953, the Cuban Revolution began. Fidel Castro, leading a force of 136 men, attacked the Moncada military barracks in the capital city of Havana. The goal of this attack was to instigate a wider revolt against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and to… Continue reading
|Andrwe Neill| With the Trylon screening Oldboy this week, I got to thinking about a new subgenre with a unique shade of ugly that’s been taking shape. Only in recent years has it emerged fully formed, given dimension in light of a heinous online subculture. Members of this… Continue reading
|Rowan Smith| When I first started getting more seriously interested in movies, around age thirteen, it was when video stores were on the precipice of catastrophe, though we didn’t know it yet. The business had already largely homogenized, people mostly rented from large chains… Continue reading
|Malcolm Cooke| The scene begins at the opera. Arriving late, Anna (Nicole Kidman) and her fiancé Joseph (Danny Huston) push their way intrusively past a dozen audience members. Once seated, the shot holds on Anna’s face for over two minutes, an image director… Continue reading
|Chris Ryba-Tures| If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already know something about One Cut of the Dead. If you’ve seen it, you don’t need me to tell you how special it is, nor would you want me spoiling it. An unassuming genre-bender like this, packed to the gills… Continue reading
|Cole Seidl| Shinichiro Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead has been incredibly, yet quietly, influential since its initial release in Japan in 2017. It has spawned a small independent film movement in Japan known as “nagamawashi” films (or “long take” films) which aim to exploit the… Continue reading
|Lars Johnson| Cinema is an art form that is still largely in its infancy. Andrei Tarkovsky’s meditative and groundbreaking films pose many questions. From the ennui present in Stalker that probes our souls and interrogates our collective morality to the existential crises of faith… Continue reading
|Timothy Zila| The final image of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia might encapsulate the filmmaker himself. A man and a dog sit next to a pond—the man leaning to his right, but staring forward with a solemn air. Content and sleepy, the dog lies in the grass, staring straight ahead. Continue reading
|Doug Carmoody| Cinema of Absence. Michaelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse (1962) begins with a directorial confession. In preparation for a grim romantic argument, Vittoria (a young woman played by Monica Vitti) takes a moment to adjust her surroundings. She reaches through an empty picture frame… Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| The adage “Comedy equals tragedy plus time” doesn’t really hold true for The Earrings of Madame de… (1958). In one early scene, aristocratic main character Louise (Danielle Darrieux) lies to her husband about losing the titular earrings while attending… Continue reading
|Dan McCabe| The Earrings of Madame de…(1953) may be the last great work of the French “Poetic Realism” period. It certainly isn’t the only film that marks the end of a historical era in the development of motion pictures. What interests me about it is that usually evolve… Continue reading
|Bob Aulert| – Oscar Levant. In the realm of meta-cinematic narratives, few films have achieved the level of sharp satire and self-awareness as Robert Altman’s 1992 film The Player. It’s a two hour long “Fuck You” from Altman to the mainstream film industry; a scathing commentary… Continue reading
|Yuval Klein| At the Mexico–U.S. Border, gangsters and police animate a caustic criminal underbelly. The protagonist, Mike Vargas, is a respected Mexican criminal prosecutor who crosses over to his American newlywed’s home country at the precise moment of an… Continue reading
|Patrick Clifford| “Oh man! You’ve never seen Touch of Evil?” “Oh… Man. That first shot!” “Tick, tick, tick, tick… tacka-tooka, tacka-tooka…” This was how my good friend Juan Torres introduced to me to Touch of Evil. Long ago, when we were college students in Chicago. I can still see… Continue reading
