James Cameron Goes Native
‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ is a Rousseau-esque oikophobic fantasy of evil humans and noble savage aliens.
William Barker
· 8 min read
Hollywood
A collection of 13 posts
The End of the Middlebrow Movie
Middlebrow movies weren’t just two-hour escape pods, they functioned as a civic glue, a source of shared language, cross-generational references, and indeed, contemporary American myth.
Harrison Kass
· 7 min read
Why We Still Love the Bomb
Stanley Kubrick’s comic masterpiece ‘Dr Strangelove’ remains a potent allegory for our times.
William Barker
· 9 min read
The Gospel According to Pasolini
Pasolini's 1964 film reimagines the gospels as fundamentally Jewish stories.
Robert Huddleston
· 8 min read
Alfred Hitchcock’s Christmas Movie
‘Psycho’ deserves recognition as a classic film for the festive season.
Christian Kriticos
· 9 min read
Out of the Past
A new book looks back on the making of Billy Wilder’s American classic.
Graham Daseler
· 11 min read
The Forgotten Ford
Before Han Solo and Indiana Jones, there was another Harrison Ford, a star of silent cinema.
Christian Kriticos
· 15 min read
The Age When Nothing Fits
‘Rebel Without a Cause’ remains a landmark classic, seventy years after its release.
Jarrod Sturnieks
· 12 min read
A Perfectly Charming Chinese Girl
Against long odds and in the face of exclusionary casting, Anna May Wong bequeathed us an extraordinary cinematic legacy.
Thomas Doherty
· 11 min read
Roger Corman: A Filmmaker’s Filmmaker
An account of all the lives Corman touched, the careers he helped to jump-start, and the genres he pioneered would fill several books.
Jacob Bielecki
· 12 min read
Here Comes the Bite
Peter Benchley’s ‘Jaws’ turns 50.
Kevin Mims
· 24 min read
How Superhero Franchises Are Killing Original Cinema
Most new movies feature neither good storytelling nor innovative filmmaking. Instead, they rely on the nostalgia of ready-made fan bases.
Jacob Bielecki
· 7 min read
Social Panic at Sundance
Meg Smaker’s film about the rehabilitation of former Guantanamo terror suspects was nuanced and sympathetic. But the mob didn’t care.
M. Pollino
· 8 min read