Casting a Spell for Peace: On ‘Arrival,’ Max Richter and Our Unending Need for Violence
“It’s in Louise’s absolute refusal to allow our barbaric side to win that ‘Arrival’ shows its moral core.”
‘Arrival’ and the Perils of Science Fiction
“What is awkward about these ‘Arrival’ reviews is how they oppose the film’s best qualities to its generic roots.”
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Pedro Costa’s ‘In Vanda’s Room’
“Whatever its genus, ‘In Vanda’s Room’ is one harrowing motion picture… It is also one of the best films from the past 20 years.”
Of Love and Other Demons: ‘Baby Doll’ Celebrates Its 60th Anniversary
A Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Fear and Desire’
“‘Fear and Desire’ is more than just a curio for the Kubrick completist. It is indeed a genuinely revealing work.”
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Le Samouraï’
“Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Le Samourai’ is the definition of cinematic precision. Each shot, each cut, each movement is a slice of redolent, provocative and sometimes even banal accuracy.”
Los Cabos IFF Review: Kenneth Lonergan’s ‘Manchester by the Sea’
“‘Manchester by the Sea’ will make your dad cry by showing him how he deals with emotions and the instructional framework through which he learned how to deal with emotions.”
Of Love and Other Demons: ‘House by the River’
“While Lang never fully embraced socialist principles over the course of his career, he always seemed to have a violent distaste for the men who stood on the shoulders of those who were less fortunate, knowing full well that social class does not correlate a strong moral conscious.”
Of Love and Other Demons: ‘The Woman in the Window’ (Fritz Lang, 1944)
“The film has an unusually conservative vibe for a noir, maintaining that the status quo may be boring but criminality has nothing to offer — not even carnal thrills.”
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ‘Dekalog’: Putting Faith in the Everyday
“Identity, like meaning in ‘Dekalog,’ is delivered piecemeal. Do immediate deeds define a person, or are these characters more than what they do in any given episode?”
Of Love and Other Demons: ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ (John Carpenter, 1994)
“In John Carpenter’s ‘In the Mouth of Madness,’ the delicate reality in which we live exists only as far we as believe it.”
Love and Death: The Romantic Sorrow of Fritz Lang’s ‘Destiny’
“‘Destiny’ arrives at its final satisfying destination as a poetic and deeply affecting film, an ethereal meditation from a now legendary filmmaker…”
Of Love and Other Demons: ‘American Gigolo’ (Paul Schrader, 1980)
“‘American Gigolo’ doesn’t necessarily work as a neo-noir, but it still has enough romance and intrigue to be well worth watching.”
The Style, Sins and Sympathies of Robert Bresson’s ‘Au hasard Balthazar’
“Much of Au hasard Balthazar’s transcendental value derives from its explicit openness to theological interpretation, particularly given Bresson’s oft-commented upon Catholicism and some of the film’s more overt symbolism.”
‘Modern Times’: Charlie Chaplin Finds Freedom in the Age of Industry
“‘Modern Times’ is emblematic of a ‘Hollywood realism,’ with a rather immaculate industrial setting, strategically tattered clothing and deliberately designed destitution.”
Piecing Together the Fragments of Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘A Married Woman’
“With ‘A Married Woman,’ Godard appears fully devoted to topical bullet points through an essayistic structure, forgoing conventional narrative, character development or expedient pacing.”
The Feminine Grotesque #10: Genre Is a Woman and She Has Fangs – On ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’
“After viewing ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’ for the first time, I wondered, ‘Doesn’t a woman have to be at least a little bit monstrous to survive?'”
Review: Corbin Bernsen’s ‘Christian Mingle’
“Like a lot of reality television, ‘Christian Mingle’ is funny for hateful reasoning that displays damaging, scary facets of our culture.”
The Uneasy Allegiances of Nicholas Ray’s ‘In a Lonely Place’
“‘In a Lonely Place’ finds Nicholas Ray still the relative newcomer to the Hollywood studio scene, yet he is already displaying subversive evidence of instilling in his work representative preoccupations.”
Violently Tender: The Secret Humanism of Vincent Gallo’s ‘Buffalo ’66’
“Though bleak and at times brutal, ‘Buffalo ’66’ manages to evoke a world of sensitivity that’s, dare I say, rather feminine.”