Eleventh Hour, Year Zero: My 10 Favorite Italian Neorealist Movies
The question of how to define a neorealist film, much on my mind for the first five months of this year, received unexpected clarification just under two weeks ago. For […]
Tag Archives: film noir
Announcing My 2023 Movie Retrospective: Italian Neorealism
The more I’ve read about the movement — or oeuvre — or feeling, labeled “Italian neorealism,” particularly in recent months, the less of a grasp I feel I have on […]
The Class of 2022: My Favorite Movies
It occurs to me that, in the ten years that I’ve been sharing updates to my list of favorite movies on here, I’ve never really explained why I do it […]
The Class of 2021: My Favorite Movies
A short story about breath: Having become fully vaccinated against COVID-19 a month ago, I’ve begun taking regular trips to the movie theater again. Few topics are as perennially popular […]
Double Feature: Memento and Irreversible
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”–Kierkegaard “He destroyed my ability to live.”–Leonard Shelby, Memento “Paranoiacs need everything explained. Some things can’t be explained.”–Alex, Irreversible […]
“He Doesn’t Need You; He’s Got His Memories” — Selznick’s and Hitchcock’s Rebecca
David O. Selznick brought Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood in 1939 and promptly got the British master his first and only Best Picture win at the Academy Awards. That film, Rebecca (1940) […]
Double Feature: The Big Lebowski and The Beach Bum
“Sometimes there’s a man — well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.” Thus the voiceover narration in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski […]
Announcing My 2020 Movie Retrospective: Hamlet on Film
Shakespearean cinema, like many of the other subjects I’ve approached in my annual film retrospectives, is something in which I’ve long wanted to become more fluent. There are boundless avenues […]
Wanting to Believe in Escape from Alcatraz
When there’s no definitive evidence either way, the romance of the situation is free to blossom. So often viewed with either fear or contempt, criminals gain a very different reputation […]
Double Feature: With Barton Fink In a Lonely Place
Welcome to Hollywood: where art goes to die, or so the story goes. Of all cinematic craftspeople, the writer is typically the most prone to cynicism, because the average screenwriter […]
Geppetto's Clocks 