Mannhunting: Exploring Masculinity in the Films of Michael Mann – Part Three
Mannhunting #3 by Bill Bria (‘Ali,’ ‘The Insider’ and ‘Collateral’)
The Art of the Score: David Mamet’s ‘Heist’
The Art of the Score #1: Blake Howard on David Mamet’s ‘Heist’
Why There Is Value and Not Excess in the Extreme Misery of Ulrich Seidl’s ‘Dog Days’
“Seidl has produced many scenes of lengthy sexual humiliation or nasty perversion, but they are stories of the world that are drawn from the horrible truth of human behaviour.”
Embracing Imperfection: ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ Turns 20
“‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ is heartbreaking and life-affirming in equal measure, which is a difficult balance to pull off, particularly in a movie that frequently treats its protagonist quite harshly.”
An Elegy of a Turbulent Phase: On Sudhir Mishra’s ‘Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi’
“‘Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi’ bears the unmistakable stamp of an artist at the very apogee of his creative prowess.”
Put Your Hand Down, Little Steve: ‘Get Over It’ at 20
“Looking back on early-2000s fare, ‘Get Over It’ stands out as smarter, sweeter, funnier and weirder than many of its contemporaries…”
Strength, Solidarity and Grace: Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘Volver’ Is an Ode to Womanhood
“Pedro Almodóvar adores women, and he’s a champion of feminism. In no other film is the Spanish filmmaker’s reverence for the female gender more evident than in the 2006 drama ‘Volver.'”
Revelation as Retroactive in ‘Southland Tales’ and ‘Kaboom’
“‘Southland Tales’ and ‘Kaboom’ aren’t defined BY their end-of-days narratives, as their apocalypses define the contents through the fulfillment of apocalyptic revelations.”
Man with the Camera: Brian De Palma’s ‘The Black Dahlia’
“‘The Black Dahlia’ shows De Palma in a reflective mood, considering the impact cinema, especially his own, has had on the lives and suffering of women on screen.”
Romantic Horror in ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ Movie Adaptations
“The six major theatrical adaptations of Phantom’s story cover a wide realm of romantic horror, fully exploiting the themes and concepts within the character.”
12 Angry Films: Sidney Lumet on Justice #12 – ‘Find Me Guilty’
“The accumulated effect of ‘Find Me Guilty,’ with its litany of absurdities, is that it is better to deliver the accused from continued subjugation than to maintain faith in a system that has lost all claim to its moral authority.”
Edward Yang’s ‘Yi Yi’ in the Era of Social Distancing
“‘Yi Yi’ is a film for grown ups in the sense that the characters have lived long enough to understand how memories of people can stay with them over the course of their lives. Keeping your distance from people is not the same as giving up on them.”
World Cinema Project: Beyond the Bounds of Narrative – ‘Limite’ and ‘Mysterious Object at Noon’
“Abstract and disjointed, the narrative of ‘Mysterious Object at Noon’ is progressively piecemeal, and what occurs in ‘Limite’ is even more inconclusive.”
Movement and Melancholy in Michael Mann’s ‘Miami Vice’
“In the cinema of Michael Mann, romance comes fast or not at all, often smothered by the anonymous network of mankind itself or maybe just your job.”
Genre at Terminal Velocity: The Films of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
“What allows Cattet and Forzani’s films to flourish is that they modify cinematic influences to accommodate today’s instant gratification culture.”
Illness and Self-Reflection: Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘Broken Embraces’ and ‘Pain and Glory’
“By experiencing Almodóvar’s films as the product of a man whose view of the world is deeply affected by a variety of nagging medical concerns, only a few late period works thoroughly scratch under the surface of his psyche.”
‘Millennium Actress’ and the Legacy of Satoshi Kon
“No matter what one pulls from Kon’s work, there’s no denying his lasting impact and innate ability to immediately render a viewer speechless.”
On the Capitalist Realism of ‘The Box’
“‘The Box’ elevates the daily minutiae of capitalist cruelty into the science fiction moral framework of a ‘Twilight Zone’ yarn.”
Modern Malick
“In Malick’s effort to capture the alienation that accompanies modernity, in his contemporary-set films, he ultimately achieves a similar alienation cinematically.”
‘District 9’: Xenophobic Themes Still Resonate a Decade Later
“‘District 9’ might not be a classic like ‘Alien’ or ‘The Terminator’ (not many films are), but it’s still an effective sci-fi film with depth and style.”