The Past Dreamed the Future Present: Derek Jarman’s ‘Jubilee’
“Jarman’s mix of time, history, memory, fantasy and dreams in ‘Jubilee’ is ultimately a hopeful warning for the future.”
Dreams and Horrors in Bohemia: ‘Marketa Lazarová’ and ‘Valerie and Her Week of Wonders’
“As much as I love a good story, the best movies always transport me, in an intangible sense, through the base elements.”
‘Black Peter’ and the Wayward Path to Manhood
“As a character study, Miloš Forman’s feature directorial debut presents a realistic vision of a boy’s attempt to come of age; a path full of setbacks without a tidy resolution.”
Different Places: Jeffrey McHale’s ‘You Don’t Nomi’ Dances with the Legacy of ‘Showgirls’
“I was taken with You Don’t Nomi’s comfortable attitude toward the complexity and ambiguity of a text that can support and sustain such wildly opposite readings.”
Tracking Tania: The Dramatic Life of Patty Hearst
“In all her dramatic iterations, Patty Hearst stands for an American purity that was always illusory but remains hallowed, that successive generations have set out to wrest back from the forces of complication.”
Easy Riders, Paper Moons: The Trouble with Classifying Peter Bogdanovich
“If New Hollywood was an attempt to shape the future in novel ways, Bogdanovich was manifestly more interested in looking back, in reaction over revolution, in conforming his artistic impulses to an unambiguously Golden Age Hollywood influence.”
Exploring Gender in Masaaki Yuasa’s ‘The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’
“‘The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ feels like an inadvertent political statement, a continuation of the status quo in the romantic comedy genre. Still, there is something there.”
Why Criticism: Film as a Business First
“Film criticism unable to confront film’s relationship to business is destined to fail and will continue to reproduce the same tired critiques of cinema.”
Lodge Kerrigan’s ‘Clean, Shaven’ and the Cinematic Virtue of Empathy
“‘Clean, Shaven’ depicts a culture in which there is little empathy for the mentally ill, perhaps because it is a culture influenced by fictional portrayals in which people like Peter are predominately unfeeling mad killers.”
Local Heroes: Elle Haywood on Arts Picturehouse Cambridge
“Arts Picturehouse Cambridge unearthed the feisty, passionate person that I am today, and made me want to help change the cinematic landscape for the better.”