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: politics
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 […]
“We’ll Take a Cup of Kindness Yet” — My 10 Favorite Capra Movies
There’s no denying that the year 2020 was a fallow period for my blogging efforts. A set of new routines brought on by both personal and global events made it […]
Announcing My 2021 Movie Retrospective: The Films of Frank Capra
The director of my current choice for “favorite movie of all time” was a paradigmatic American success story: a Sicilian immigrant who rose through the ranks of a booming industry […]
Double Feature: For Sama and A Diary for Timothy
The shot lasts only about seventeen seconds, a simple downward tilt. First we see Sama, the young daughter of journalist and filmmaker Waad al-Kateab, being held by her father, Hamza, […]
Overdue: A City of Sadness
Here begins a new blog series, in which I pick at a list of movies that I’ve never seen before but really should have by now. The parameters are just […]
Sullivan’s Travels by Preston Sturges
A message movie disguised as a frothy comedy when it isn’t a frothy comedy disguised as a message movie, Sullivan’s Travels (1941) is an inside-baseball satire on Hollywood’s self-importance and […]
Double Feature: The Devil Is a Woman and That Obscure Object of Desire
In addition to a pair of silent film adaptations and a 1959 Julien Duvivier film starring Brigitte Bardot, the two most notable cinematic takes on the 1898 Pierre Louÿs novel La […]
Double Feature: The Terminator and RoboCop
There are several interesting ways of contrasting these two landmark films about cybernetic organisms, or cyborgs. One could play up the dystopian angle, thinking of RoboCop as the Brazil (or […]
Tracing the Influence of Grand Illusion
Earlier this month, the Oscars happened, at which, to my great surprise and delight, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite took home Best Picture in addition to three other awards. It bested eight competitors, […]
Geppetto's Clocks 