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Lights, Camera, Mania: Showbiz Satire’s Descents Into Madness by Charles...
In his seminal tell-all Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger claimed to reveal the festering truth beneath the dream factory of the American film industry. His was a bemused but cynical perspective on the...
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In Like Flynn (Only): The Rise and Rapid Fall of the Swashbuckler by Steven...
After any viewing of Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), one is tempted to say, “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” From the perfection of its casting, with Flynn, Olivia de...
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Lie To Me: The Multiple Personalities of Tom Waits’ Acting Career by Chris...
“I ain’t no extra baby, I’m a leading man.”— Tom Waits, Goin’ Out WestTom Waits lights up the screen. The minute the singer appears in a film, he brings with him a sort of atmospheric baggage—we may...
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3D, Part 1: James Cameron and the Broken Promise of the Third Wave by Vadim...
[Note: This essay is the first in a two-part series on 3D. Part 2, coming soon, will discuss the unexpected peak of 3D as an artistic form. —ed.]It’s not fair to say that James Cameron ruined...
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3D, Part 2: How 3D Peaked At Its Valley by Vadim Rizov
I didn’t expect to spend Thanksgiving Weekend 2018 watching ten 3D movies: marathon viewing is not my favorite experience in general, and I haven’t spent years longing to see, say, Friday the 13th Part...
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When Dirty Harry Fought Pauline Kael by Keith Phipps
“Dirty” Harry Callahan fought many bad guys across five films between the years 1971 and 1988, from a serial killer named Scorpio to violent revolutionaries to a gang of seaside rapists. But one of his...
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Paris sans Agnès by Andrew Lapin
It was morning in Paris when news of Agnès Varda’s death reached the world. On a hunch, I left the apartment I shared with my girlfriend in the city’s 5th arrondissement and walked the 30 minutes, past...
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Larry Fessenden's "The Last Winter," The Only Scary Movie About The Scariest...
There are certain generally held expectations about the relationship between reality as we live it every day and films set in a dystopian future. No one who has watched even a few minutes of cable news...
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Sleuthing in the ‘70s: ‘The Long Goodbye’,‘Chinatown’, and ‘Night Moves’ by...
“There’s a body on the railingThat I can’t identifyAnd I’d like to reassure youBut I’m not that kind of guy.”—Robyn Hitchcock, “Raymond Chandler Evening,” 1986.At the conclusion of John Huston’s 1941...
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Split Diopter: Looking at Women’s Identities Through a Male and Female Lens...
It’s a common stereotype that men are known to be the more aggressive and competitive of the sexes, and that women are far coyer and subtler at the game. Studies have shown that women enjoy cooperation...
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Unready Player One: Why Movies and Video Games Don’t Mix by Daniel Carlson
There’s a concept in video game theory called “ludonarrative dissonance.” At its core, it’s about the interaction between a game’s themes (what it wants you to feel) and its mechanics (what it wants...
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The Two Werner Herzogs by John Redding & B. A. Hunt
Raffi Asdourian/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Pepe courtesy Matt Furie/mattfurie.com | Remix by Jason ReedWerner Herzog, that hypnotic German filmmaker who once tried to murder his leading man, who taunted...
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Ignite the Light: How Katy Perry’s “Firework” Brings Scenes From Three Very...
When Katy Perry’s “Firework” begins playing for the first time in Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, it’s not especially noticeable. The song is part of the background music at Marineland, the aquatic...
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Remember My Forgotten Women: The Dire Worlds of “Sucker Punch” and “Gold...
Halfway through my first viewing of Zach Snyder’s Sucker Punch—as I tried to disengage from the negative criticism floating around the film, as I admitted I was not only getting sucked in, I was...
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War Starts At Midnight: The Three Wartime Visions of Michael Powell and...
Few filmmakers have made films as thematically rich as those from writers/directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in the 1940s. From 1943 to 1949, Powell and Pressburger, better known as the...
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Moving: On the Cinema of Kate Bush by Willow Maclay
“Experimenting with film is exciting to me. It feels like it has purpose.” -Kate Bush, Egos and Icons, 1993Kate Bush has always been more than your average musical artist. It’s not ordinary to have a...
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Map of the Human Heart: My New York in ‘Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist’ and...
For ten years now, I’ve nursed an oddly specific theory: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is the most geographically accurate film about New York City, at least within the last 15 years. This is a...
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Gold is Cold, Diamonds are Dead: Charlize Theron’s Relentless Search for...
In 2004, the same year that she won an Oscar for Monster, Charlize Theron achieved perhaps her greatest fame with the Dior television ad for J’Adore. A decade later, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road...
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The Cat Who Won’t Cop Out: Shaft as the ‘70s Black Superhero by Jason Bailey
(The following essay is excerpt from Jason’s new book, It’s Okay With Me: Hollywood, the 1970s, and the Return of the Private Eye.)The first thing John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) does in Gordon Parks’...
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Left Hand, Right Hand: Good and Evil in Bill Paxton’s ‘Frailty’ by April Wolfe
[Last year, Musings paid homage to Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You’ve Never Seen, a review anthology from the National Society of Film Critics that championed studio orphans from the ‘70s...
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