A Perfectly Charming Chinese Girl
Against long odds and in the face of exclusionary casting, Anna May Wong bequeathed us an extraordinary cinematic legacy.
Thomas Doherty
· 11 min read
film
A collection of 24 posts
Megalopolis: Bloated, Outré—and Brilliant
Like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, it’s chaos alright—but it’s a dazzling chaos.
Ralph Leonard
· 8 min read
Roman Polanski’s ‘Chinatown’ Fifty Years On
Chinatown is noir at its bleakest, yet most stylish.
Ralph Leonard
· 9 min read
Roger Corman: A Filmmaker’s Filmmaker
An account of all the lives Corman touched, the careers he helped to jump-start, and the genres he pioneered would fill several books.
Jacob Bielecki
· 12 min read
How Superhero Franchises Are Killing Original Cinema
Most new movies feature neither good storytelling nor innovative filmmaking. Instead, they rely on the nostalgia of ready-made fan bases.
Jacob Bielecki
· 7 min read
History on Horseback: Napoleon Bonaparte
The French emperor and military commander played a pivotal role in an epochal transformation.
Ralph Leonard
· 16 min read
‘The Princess Bride’ at 50
A look back at William Goldman’s bonkers metafictional novel ‘The Princess Bride,’ which later became a much-loved family film.
Kevin Mims
· 18 min read
Belafonte Reappraised
Neither hagiographers nor haters of the late musician, actor, and activist have managed to get him right.
Ronald Radosh
· 18 min read
Social Panic at Sundance
Meg Smaker’s film about the rehabilitation of former Guantanamo terror suspects was nuanced and sympathetic. But the mob didn’t care.
M. Pollino
· 8 min read
Guilty and Insane
Dissociative Identity Disorder and the riddle of human responsibility.
Daniel Kriegman
· 20 min read
The Delia Demolition
Why is the Atlantic slinging mud at the 72-year-old author of ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ on the eve of the film’s release?
Kevin Mims
· 19 min read
The Subversive Conservatism of Rocky Balboa
Rocky's vision of a good life was humble, traditional, and local.
Stewart Slater
· 8 min read
B.S. Moss and the Dawn of the Movie-Palace Era
Although the vaudeville circuits would last through the 1920s, the way was now paved for impressive purpose-built movie houses with proper lighting and sound that would exhibit first-rate popular entertainment to general audiences.
Charles B. Moss Jr. and Jonathan Kay
· 16 min read
Does Christine Brown Deserve to Burn in Hell?
In the pitiless moral universe of writer-director Sam Raimi’s 2009 horror film ‘Drag Me to Hell,’ guilt isn’t easily absolved and debts must always be paid in the end.
Jamie Palmer
· 12 min read
Revisiting ‘Wake in Fright’, A Peculiarly Australian Kind of Hell
Five decades after its release, Wake in Fright remains a brutally captivating reminder that modernity is just a thin veneer over the darker recesses of the human heart.
Ryan Anderson
· 16 min read