“In cinema, it’s tough to depict sincerity without it coming across as contrived or sickly-sweet, but it’s a feeling that myself and many others yearn for, especially when it comes together as beautifully as it does in ‘But I’m a Cheerleader.'”
“‘The Beach House’ signals an exciting new star in horror.”
“If you listen to Beastie Boys, Jonze’s technique — a familiar blend of rough and smooth, high tech and low tech — comes correct. If you don’t listen to Beastie Boys, the movie serves as a biographical and musical introduction.”
“The affinity I have for Prince, and the things that I learned from his music — and continue to learn — is different than what my mum took away from it decades earlier; the music, and the connection we share with it, is something I find myself returning to regularly.”
“‘Express’ felt like music that was made FOR ME — not my parents, and certainly not the other teenagers I knew who liked music that seemed boring and soulless.”
“The strength of ‘Side A’ is the acceptance of its limitations — now is perhaps not the time for rock bands to reinvent the wheel, but instead to provide some kind of solace, support or guidance.”
“Aviva and Eden’s dances — together and apart — mobilize Yakin’s film, and function as bodily mirrors and emotional mirages; gain and loss, self and love.”
“Much of Babyteeth’s vitality can be located in the way each of the central characters is so fully realized.”
“While ‘The Black Cat’ does not share many explicit connections with Poe’s 1843 story, both texts use archetypal symbolism to explore painfully intimate experiences (in Poe’s case, addiction and mental disarray, and in Ulmer’s case, psychological trauma).”
“‘The Audition’ considers how we navigate the middle space between power and powerlessness, and Hoss’ performance, whether she’s yearning for affection or responsible for staggering brutality, is the film’s greatest asset.”
“What both Pacino and De Palma vividly convey throughout the film is that there’s absolutely nothing dubious or spurious about Carlito’s conviction in his ability to evolve.”
“Taken as a whole, ‘KiCk i’ is a delirious tour-de-force, a compilation of experiments that don’t fully cohere but still build up to an intriguing final image.”
“HBO has come a long way in representing the intersectionality of race and gender.”
“More than ever, it is crucial to contemplate what this nostalgia phenomenon means for the future of the arts and our discomfort with the new. Will there be a ‘new’ in the new world?”
“One of the most effective storytelling strategies in Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’ is the application of the simple and elegant dichotomy.”
“Right now, I’ve never felt more creative.” – Rhys Handley Interviews 70s Rock Icon Suzi Quatro About Her Career and the 2020 Documentary ‘Suzi Q’
“The main reason I write about horror movies, aside from having a deep and abiding love for them, is that I have a perspective unique to me. But, for certain men, that’s not enough.”
“Local Heroes” is a Vague Visages column dedicated to movie theater memories and the theatrical experience.
“‘Raging Bull’ — a complex character study about methods and codes of conduct — all too often gets reductively tagged as Scorsese’s toxic masculinity sports movie that allowed De Niro to lose (and gain) weight in pursuit of an Oscar.”
“In Caravaggio and Scorsese’s art, the silent actions of male and female characters speak louder than words. We don’t need to hear Holofernes scream to understand what Judith has taken.”