|Dan Howard| When Bruce Robinson was living as a struggling artist in London, he drew inspiration directly from his own less-than-glamourous lifestyle for his first novel, and eventually first film. If an artist doesn’t come from money, it can be very difficult to climb their way out of poverty… Continue reading
|Ryan Sanderson| The Last Detail is a film of contrasts. It’s a film about everything, in which almost nothing happens—a beautiful, very funny work of art composed of some of the ugliest, most depressing imagery you’ll ever see in a major studio film. It’s an improvisational-feeling actor’s showcase… Continue reading
|Jackson Stern| We like to imagine that, when faced with prospects of injustice, repression, and hypocrisy from those in the highest of towers, we’d stand tall and together. We’d overthrow our oppressors by bashing them or, better yet, outsmarting them at their own cruel game… 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
|MH Rowe| If you’re going to do something really stupid, it’s not a bad idea to be beautiful. Maybe that’s how Val Kilmer ended up in Top Secret! (1984), which is both his film debut and a spoof of spy stories, resistance thrillers, and, for some reason, Elvis Presley. Top Secret!… 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
|Allison Vincent| As a kid growing up at the tail end of the 80s through the 90s with access to cable and an unrestricted library card, it was pretty easy to consume the media I wanted without too much interruption from my parents. My dad was lax, to say the least, when it came to… Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| Elaine May probably wishes I wasn’t writing this piece. While May adapted, directed, and starred in her 1971 directorial debut, A New Leaf, she was less than pleased with the finished product. Against May’s wishes, her film was edited by Academy Award-winning editors Don… Continue reading
|Terry Serres| Elaine May’s first feature film, A New Leaf, is a production rich in lore. It was based on a short story, “The Green Heart,” written by Jack Ritchie and first appearing in the March 1963 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. The story involves the well-heeled Henry… Continue reading
|Vincent Cheng| CONTEXT What creates the sensation of personal discomfort when watching comedies, and what is the value of that discomfort? To answer these questions, I’d like you to first close your eyes and imagine something funny. Undoubtedly you pictured, as I did… Continue reading
|Nicole Rojas-Oltmanns| Even though Wesley Snipes, John Leguizamo, and Patrick Swayze are all cishet men playing gay drag queens, I actually love To Wong Foo (1995, directed by Beeban Kidron). The drag is really fantastically done. Also, there is small-town drama, RuPaul… Continue reading
| MH Rowe | It qualifies neither as an obscure bit of Hollywood trivia nor as a famous declaration of aesthetic taste, but you may or may not happen to know that the director Paul Thomas Anderson once went on at length in an interview… Continue reading
|Andrew Neill| Let’s get a potentially uncool but nonetheless true thing about me out of the way right now: I am a huge fan of the American film director Wesley Wales Anderson. You probably know him as Wes Anderson. He’s one of my favorite directors—gotta be in the top three… Continue reading
|Dan Howard| In this day in age, television is just as common and almost essential to our daily lives as food or nature. Sometimes, it feels like it’s just always been around, but in fact, the first concept of what would ultimately become television, Facsimile Transmissions, was introduced… Continue reading
|Brogan Earney| By the early 2000s, the teen comedy genre was at the height of its powers. Movies like She’s All That, 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless and many more, were pumped out monthly and guaranteed to bring box office success. Eventually, they became… 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
|Jake Rudegeair| “Coming of age” always struck me as a flat phrase for something so bumpy, so relentless. It doesn’t really illustrate that slow erosion of our bodies and souls as we’re worn down by the slings and arrows of experience, cruelly and carelessly reformed over and over… 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
|Allison Vincent| A foundational memory of mine is sitting in Dr. Doug Julien’s “Comedy Text and Theory” course at the University of Minnesota and realizing the slender thin line that separates a scream from a laugh. Dr. Doug, as he liked to be addressed, told the class he was… 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
|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
|John Costello| Despite the underlying wartime suspense and tragedy, Five Graves to Cairo (1943) gives the audience ample reason to laugh at the Nazis and their accomplices. The film deflates the legend of Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and constantly demeans… 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
|Finn Odum| Several weeks ago, in the monotonous gray cubes of the Mall of America® office tower, I dared to make a joke about my gender identity. This is how it went:
Finn, 24, strikingly gorgeous and wickedly funny email specialist: Now, I’m not like most women—in that I’m not one… Continue reading
|Chris Polley| Nine years ago, as is the American way, a viral car commercial brought us all together. Advertising Volvo’s state-of-the-art dynamic steering, it showed a chiseled man in his 50s atop two large trucks, his stance wide and firm, with one foot planted on each of the behemoths’… Continue reading
|Alex Kies| World historian Herman Schumacher graduates from college into a shot-on-video split-level nightmare. His family won’t return his calls, his old friends don’t like him anymore. He works, dressed in a shirt and tie, digging holes in the forest. His girlfriend might be cheating… Continue reading
|Jeremy Noble| “Banks, clothes make the man, I believe that. You say to me you want to go shopping, you want to buy clothes, but you don’t know what kind. You leave that hanging in the air, like I’m going to fill in the blanks. Now that, to me, is like asking me who you are, and I
don’t know who…” Continue reading
