Beyond the Video Store Shelves: How Oldboy Introduced me to a New World of Subtitled Film

|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

An Insolent Heart Hath Damned Thee: Original Sin at Miller’s Crossing

John Turturro as Bernie Bernbaum, a light-skinned, ark hair man in a dark suit and light shirt sitting in an ornamental armchair in a large room. Bernie is smiling at his conversation partner, who is not depicted in the shot

|Kevin Obsatz| I have a confession to make. I don’t know that I’ve ever “liked” a Coen Brothers movie on the first viewing. Possibly Raising Arizona—but I was probably only half paying attention to that one, as an eight or nine-year-old, on VHS. I doubt my parents would… Continue reading

Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Hat

Theatrical poster of Coen Brothers’ film “Miller’s Crossing.”

|Lucas Hardwick| I’m a bald guy, so when the temperatures drop and there’s a perpetual nip in the air, I often find the top of my head gets a little uncomfortably cool. While confined to the contentment of my own home, where the dress code is free of the hassle of coordination and everyone is at liberty… Continue reading

100 Nazi Scalps: Tarantino’s Violent Art of Rewriting History with Inglourious Basterds

Lt. Aldo Raine addresses his soldiers.

| Dan Howard | Quentin Tarantino makes his despise for Hitler and the Nazi party well-known. The vast majority would agree. Over the last nearly 15 years, Tarantino made his own kind of historical revisionist cinema with Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Continue reading