Category: Reviews
Hope and Glory: ‘Odd Man Out’ and the Need for Cinematic Recognition
Why isn’t Carol Reed’s heavy-hitting 1947 drama Odd Man Out better known? I wondered this recently after revisiting the film on television—following a period of not having seen it for quite a while. My taste for it has never waned, but I had forgotten some of the nuances that are present in this very complex,…
Reviewing ‘It Follows’: An Encounter with a Sexually Transmitted Demon
“This thing. It’s going to follow you. Somebody gave it to me and I passed it to you […] All you can do is pass it along to someone else.” And so Jay (Maika Monroe) suddenly finds herself sharing her life with a tireless, invisible hell-creature bent on brutally murdering her. The idea of a…
Rethinking Birdman: Buddha comes to Broadway
The first frame in Birdman has Michael Keaton levitating in mid-air, in a meditational posture. At other times the camera lingers on a golden head of the Buddha. What is going on? Is Birdman, as some have claimed, a Buddhist film? There is other evidence for this. In the midst of his panic and egoistic…
Ana Lily Amirpour’s “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”
This is a little embarrassing. As a self-proclaimed Jim Jarmusch fan, I was very eager to see his latest movie, a refreshingly quirky take on the vampire genre. I even wrote a rather long piece on Only Lovers Left Alive, which you can read here. So did I have egg on my face when I…
American Sniper: Chris Kyle, Clint Eastwood, American Manhood
American Sniper, an account of the life and times of Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), the most lethal sniper in American history, bears the classic marks of a Clint Eastwood film. Eastwood’s career, intentionally or unintentionally, has always been deeply entangled with ideas of masculinity – ideas which cumulatively seem to suggest an overarching vision of…