Author: Jonathan Eig
Thrillers Reviewed: ‘A Walk Among the Tombstones’ and ‘Septimo’
I really like Scott Frank. The writer of such sharp screenplays as Get Shorty (1995), Dead Again (1991), and Minority Report (2002), Frank has worked steadily in recent years on some popular movies, but has sadly not written anything I have been interested in for a long time now. And I really like Liam Neeson.…
John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary: The Mystery of Faith and Forgiveness
“I am going to kill you, Father, because you are innocent.” That line, delivered by an anonymous and unseen penitent in the opening scene of John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary, dominates all that follows. And yet, the actual plot of McDonagh’s second feature pays little mind to the threat and all it entails. And because of…
Steven Knight: The Screenwriter as Auteur?
Regular readers of Curnblog no doubt recall fondly the slugfest Simon Butler and I engaged in a while back about the validity of the auteur theory. I don’t think we changed anyone’s minds, but hopefully it provided some reasonable debate. As an opponent of the theory that unquestioningly elevates directors above everyone else in every…
The Greatest Sibling Filmmakers: Keeping Cinema in the Family
John Michael McDonagh’s new movie Calvary is quite good. And quite difficult. I intend to write about it in some detail in the near future, but I often find it better to think about difficult things for a while before committing fingertip to keyboard. So, in the meantime, I’m using McDonagh as a springboard to…
Flesh and Blood: Body Modification and the Movies
I suppose it all began, it cinematic circles at least, with the Germans. The Student of Prague (1913), The Golem (1920). Morbid tales of the undead. The soulless. They begat Frankenstein in 1931 (though I suppose Mary Shelley actually begat it) and the rush was on. Altered versions of the human form would become a…