#30 — The Farewell (Lulu Wang, 2019) The best movies sit and resonate with a viewer, as if taking up permanent residence in the soul. Even as I write that, I understand the sentimental is almost unbearably syrupy, instilling in … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Thirty
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961). A horror movie that favors spooky atmosphere over jolting shocks, The Innocents is adapted from the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw. Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) takes a position as a governess at … Continue reading Then Playing — The Innocents; Marshall; Things to Come
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. When I first started obsessively hunting down comic books with the … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Iron Man by Denny O’Neil and Luke McDonnell
497. Rain Parade, Explosions in the Glass Palace (1984) Following their well-regarded debut album, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, Rain Parade began to splinter. Most notably, band cofounder David Roback formally departed, evidently weary of jostling with the group’s other … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #497 to #495
America, This is Your Chance by Michelle Alexander Well, this is the article I’ve been waiting for. There are few people more qualified to comment on this particular moment in U.S. history than Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Fire This Time edition
It’s probably unnecessarily reductive and comparative to note that “Sweeter” represents a sign that Leon Bridges is about to move into the What’s Going On phase of his career. But that’s what I finding myself thinking as I listen to … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Leon Bridges, “Sweeter”
#31 — Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) A common failing of first-time feature directors is a tendency to put every last notion they have into a film that can’t possibly hold them all. The opportunity to make a full-length movie … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Thirty-One
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. One of the sad side effects of so much of modern serious filmmaking begin done under the … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — The 13th movie poster
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Not long ago, Sarah … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Sarah Cooper, “How to lobster”
#32 — Looper (Rian Johnson, 2012) Violence begets violence. In the longstanding cinematic algebra that posits the swinging of fists and the pulling of triggers as the readiest and surest solutions to all manner of problems — such as the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Thirty-Two
Coffee for Two 