Decline and Folly
‘Megalopolis’ and the rise and fall of Francis Ford Coppola.
Oliver Jia
· 14 min read
Cinema
A collection of 135 posts
‘Bright Lights, Big City’ at Forty
Jay McInerney’s debut novel was the first work of fiction to explore yuppie culture, and its success changed American publishing.
Kevin Mims
· 16 min read
All Hail the New Flesh
For all its decorative asides about predatory male sexuality, ‘The Substance’ is most coherently understood as a morality tale about the folly of feminist illusions.
Charlotte Allen
· 11 min read
Sonny Side Up
Al Pacino’s personal life has been a bit of a train wreck, but his new memoir leaves no doubt that acting has been the most important thing in his life.
Kevin Mims
· 21 min read
A Joke Too Far?
Todd Phillips’s unfairly reviled sequel raises interesting questions about the artistic licence auteurs take with well-known properties.
Allan Stratton
· 11 min read
Blonde on Blonde
Andrew Dominik’s much-maligned film about the life and death of a screen icon claws through the sentimental myth-making in search of terrible truths.
Charlotte Allen
· 32 min read
Tales of Creation and Adaptation
The journey of two novels from mind to page to silver screen.
Allan Stratton
· 22 min read
A Filmmaker in Spite of Himself
Sacha Guitry disdained cinema as an art form, but with a slew of recent Blu-ray releases, his acidic comedies are finally receiving the attention they deserve.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 22 min read
Killing for a Quiet Life
John Krasinski’s dystopian horror trilogy imagines a biblical plague visited on the din of modernity.
Thomas Larson
· 8 min read
Roman Polanski’s ‘Chinatown’ Fifty Years On
Chinatown is noir at its bleakest, yet most stylish.
Ralph Leonard
· 9 min read
Texas Porn Star Massacres
Ti West’s clever and original ‘X’ trilogy is elevated postmodern horror at its finest and its director’s best work to date.
Allan Stratton
· 12 min read
Abiding Legends
Richard Matheson, George R. Stewart, and the birth of the Calipocalypse.
Kevin Mims
· 23 min read
Blood, Sweat, and Gasoline
The story of Hollywood’s most unlikely blockbuster franchise, Mad Max.
Allan Stratton
· 21 min read
A History of Stunts
Ryan Gosling’s new film is a love letter to an under-appreciated art.
Allan Stratton
· 9 min read
American Carnage
Alex Garland’s spectacular new film ‘Civil War’ is a warning of what can happen to democracies when civil society collapses.
Allan Stratton
· 7 min read