“Almost as if something out of a Japanese elementary school history class, Miyazaki’s last Studio Ghibli film leaves me with a great sense of numbness rather than the invigorating wonder I have come to expect from the master of anime.”
A Column on Film Criticism by Justine A. Smith (@redroomrantings)
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
“Perhaps not the film for the adventurous young adult, Ponyo proves that remarkable visual inventiveness more-than makes up for candy-sweet morals and glass-fragile plot lines.”
A Column on Film Criticism by Justine A. Smith
“Where Indignation deviates a little from its otherwise classical trappings is in its structure.”
“So, what is it about these two figureheads of cult film that makes them so iconically and definitively camp?”
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
“Abandoning messages of environmentalism and nonviolence, ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ abandons the narrative moralities that typify the director’s style.”
A Column on Film Criticism by Justine A. Smith
“Can hearing something be scarier than seeing something?”
“It’s like hanging out with your spoiled great aunt at Thanksgiving for an hour until she gets plastered and ruins everything.”
“With ‘Le amiche,’ Antonioni further bridges the gap between comparatively conservative melodrama and the groundbreaking narrative and visual abstraction he would soon unleash.”
A Series by Dylan Moses Griffin
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
“Two personified thumbs up.”
“A careful reframing of the typical coming-of-age narrative, ‘Spirited Away’ displays a fondness those infinitely awkward years, while showing us all how important they were in making us who we are today.”
A Column on Film Criticism by Justine A. Smith
“Sing along with a corpse and come out the other side appreciating the bus ride home.”
“A series of goofy images isn’t a comedy.”