“New York might have the physical structure where one can project themselves onto a city, but Los Angeles’ mutability allows people to graft their life into its cultural fabric.”
“‘Ajji’ successfully imparts the notion that it’s compulsory for victims to retaliate against extreme injustice by transforming into wolves.”
“Art is a product of its time; is it Get Out’s fault that the time mostly resembles a horror production?”
Marshall Shaffer’s 2nd annual #FilmStruckFebruary begins!
“The Maries, and ‘Daisies’ itself, are quintessential fruits of the Czech New Wave, deconstructing social hierarchies while embodying the free-flowing, iconoclastic ethos that roused and buoyed 1960s Czechoslovak cinema.”
“While it doesn’t pop with philosophical resonance like Ghibli pictures, it has enough fairy dust in its sleeves to keep you transfixed and rooting for the heroine.”
“Maybe this war of innocence is one that’s never really won or lost. Maybe we just take life one battle at a time.”
“Lang’s film becomes a committed act of social justice advocacy, raging against its enforced limitation, and striving to break the formal apparatus that could often be employed to constrain Classic Hollywood cinema.”
“Just because ‘The Wages of Fear’ is dire and pessimistic, that doesn’t make it any less perceptive or accurate. Quite the contrary: the virulent truth only makes it that much more engrossing…”
“Even death can become tedious when one deals with it every day.”
“The processing conversation is perhaps the most telling sequence of all, as Quell submits to The Master — the Master Projection — and acknowledges his own self-deception.”
An Essay by Marshall Shaffer
“Dogs are a huge asset to the horror genre, as menaces and as loyal comrades.”
An Essay by Ella Kemp
“‘Benny’s Video’ implicates us, the audience, for watching. Haneke chides the spectators, removed from the action by a screen, for their inability — or perhaps their unwillingness — to stop the violence.”
“Bergman’s penchant for giving physical form to the conscious and subconscious mind is rarely more apparent than in his 1957 masterpiece ‘Wild Strawberries.’”
“As any great piece of cinema should evoke in the viewer, Alice Lowe’s electric performance in ‘Prevenge’ makes one laugh, cry and shriek in terror.”
“There has always been a conflict at play in Nicholson’s screen presence: between ‘Nicholson’ and ‘Jack.’ The desire to be taken seriously and the lure of the riotous Jack persona have always done battle across his decades of stardom.”
“‘Z’ is thoughtful, provocative, impassioned entertainment, stylish and teeming with conviction.”
“Ghost Dog glides through the story with the swiftness of an avian being in a film that never fails to be cathartic.”