Justine Smith (@redroomrantings) lives and writes in Montreal, Quebec. She has a bachelor’s degree in Film Studies and a passionate hunger for all kinds of cinema. Along with writing for Vague Visages, she has written for Vice Canada, Cleo: A Feminist Journal and Little White Lies Magazine.
Josh Slater-Williams (@jslaterwilliams) is a freelance writer based in England. Alongside writing for Vague Visages, he is a regular contributor to independent British magazine The Skinny and has written for Little White Lies magazine, VODzilla.co, The Film Stage, and PopOptiq.
Jordan Brooks (@viewtoaqueue) is an increasingly-snobby cinefile based out of London, England. As a contributor to several online publications, including his own blog, he has succeeded in fulfilling his life long dream of imposing strong opinions on others.
“The show is moving without being sappy, fast-paced without feeling like it runs at anything other than the speed of life, and insightful without being driven by political messages.”
Dylan Moses Griffin has been a cinephile for as long as he can remember. His favorite film is Taxi Driver, and he reads the works of Roger Ebert like it’s scripture. If you want, he will talk to you for 30 minutes about the chronologically weird/amazing Fast and […]
“An incredible failure, ‘The Rose Tattoo’ has value in understanding the confines of the production code and the importance of good direction.”
“The problem of Birdman isn’t its maximalism, but the direction in which it’s aimed.”
“Building on the impressive groundwork laid by Season One, the first half of the new season provides a closer look at the trials and tribulations of the Pfefferman clan and also zooms out, giving Transparent both an emotional claustrophobia and a wide canvas.”
“While Iñárritu’s tactics can become tiresome over multiple views, he is perhaps one of the greatest, single-experience filmmakers working today.”
“Babel is Crash with delusions of global grandeur; a film that masquerades as a sweeping, humanistic epic, but is instead an ultimately hammy, superficial and miserablist game of connect-the-dots.”
“Amores Perros clocks in at 150 minutes, yet not a single frame feels unnecessary.”
“It’s understandable for viewers to call something ‘overrated’ when they feel let down, however, critics should strike the word from their vocabularies.”
“A tiresome example of early 2000s prestige filmmaking, 21 Grams holds the impressions of grand gestures without any of the substance.”
“A Walk Among the Tombstones beholds one of the most understated and unique performances from action hero-era Liam Neeson.”
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
“Sisters is a house party film told by and from the perspective of women, and that is precisely why it succeeds.”
“Throughout much of his 60s work, Imamura often examined the balance between ordinary and unordinary people, and in The Profound Desire of the Gods, he finds an exceptional way of highlighting the extremity of this concept.”
“Even removed from the extraterrestrials and murderous Midwestern crime families, the world of Fargo is a violent and disturbing one, and Hank attempts to do his part by creating an Esperanto-like universal language.”
Here’s Josh Slater-Williams on four underrated gems of the past year.
“For all its frenetic editing, energetic performances and twisty narrative structure, there is sadly an elephant in the room, and that’s the film’s treatment (or mistreatment) of women.”
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