The Sage is not Humane: Sam Peckinpah’s Five Best Films
Sam Peckinpah occupies a unique station in the canon of American film directors because he found success just before the creative floodgates of New Hollywood. He then went on to push the boundaries of what could and couldn’t be shown on film—crafting works more transgressive than many of his younger peers. This made him the target of studio meddling and censorship, but his legacy is nonetheless founded on grit, ingenuity, and daring.
House of the Dragon Season 1: A Worthy Successor to the Game of Thrones Legacy
Succeeding Game of Thrones (GoT), one of the most widely discussed and watched shows in television history, is no easy job. The shows will be compared, and previous baggage always remembered. House of the Dragon, a show about the rise and fall of a ruling house in the GoT universe, stares down that daunting prospect with aplomb and more.
My Heart’s Memory Turns To You: Derek Jarman’s Blue
More last testament than love letter, Derek Jarman’s 1993 experimental film Blue was as unique and challenging then as it continues to be today. More radio play than movie, it’s 79 minutes of an entirely blue saturated screen, over which two interwoven stories braid together to weave a story of Jarman’s recollected, daydreamed, restless experiences of living with AIDS in 1990s London, and the adventures of blue itself as a color and a character. Punctuated throughout are the ghostly names of Jarman’s former friends and lovers already lost to the disease.
My One & Only Love: Leaving Las Vegas
Every time I go to Las Vegas, usually for work to spend time in a light-locked, soulless conference room listening to the obvious masquerading as professional advice, I think the same thing. That there’s a deep, longing melancholy to the place. A sadness behind the bright neon lights of the strip, the omnipresent din of the casinos, and the faces of those who’ve come to Sin City seemingly to let loose and get away from it all. Far from the oasis in the desert in promises, the city aches with loss. An unfulfilled hope of gambled pleasure, and drawn like moths to the flame by the flashing billboards, and where darkness never truly descends, we wander around in the half-light neon glow of the desperate attempts to separate us from our time and money.
Trying to Empathize With The Whale
The dissipating buzz surrounding The Whale (2022) was inevitable considering that its only major attraction post its film festival run were the names attached, namely those of the director, Darren Aronofsky, and star, Brendan Fraser. Although their star power can be felt in this film, it is not nearly enough to make The Whale seem like anything more than it is: a typical Oscar-baity, A24, indie “think-piece.”
Fitzcarraldo’s Burden
German film director Werner Herzog often reminisces of the lost art of being able to trust our eyes. How everything we see in modern movies is informed by digital manipulation, sophisticated editing, and the sheer total commercial management of putting something on the screen. He laments the early days of cinema, where what was projected was so believable that, so the stories go, audiences would flee terrified from their seats at the prospect of a train coming towards the camera. Somewhere along the way, we lost this terror.
Irma Vep: The Glory of a Reboot
Irma Vep is the film lover’s dream – to get to watch a fictional production with all the troubles and beauty of the filmmaking process put on full display.
More War Than Peace: Sergei Bondarchuk’s 4 War & Peace Films (1966-67)
When older generations say that they don’t make movies like they used to, they’re talking about Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace films, released between 1966 and 1967. An absolutely breathtaking series of four individual movies spread out over seven hours, they recount Tolstoy’s epic tale of Russian aristocratic and military perspective during the Napoleonic invasion of the early nineteenth century in elaborate, authentic and highly orchestrated detail.