|Azra Thakur| Four or five years ago, a colleague and I went out for lunch in downtown Saint Paul. We’d started our jobs within a couple of months of each other and were new to working in Lowertown, trying to find vegetarian-friendly restaurants to get a break from bringing… Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) is my Die Hard. It is a Christmas movie, and I defend it as such with my life. Every year since I first saw it in 2007, I trot it out in December alongside the standard fare like A Charlie Brown Christmas and Love Actually. One could… Continue reading
|Sophie Durbin| When distilled down to one sentence, the plot of The Long Good Friday might go something like this: “An English gangster, two American businessmen, and some Irish nationalists all have a very bad day.” It reads like the opener to a deadpan joke at a party full of… Continue reading
|Jake Rudegeair| As hard as we pleaded and begged, we couldn’t get mom to take us to Blockbuster every day. In the 90s, we had to rely on the cabinet VHS collection, stuffed with ancient treasures like Key Largo, Terminator 2, and taped copies of whatever dad… Continue reading
|Timothy Zila| When we meet Sam Lowry, the protagonist of Brazil, he’s flying. High above the clouds, clothed in a plastic-looking breast piece borrowed from a cosplayer’s wardrobe and feathery wings fit for a campy theater production. There is no clear purpose in his flight— Continue reading
|Ryan Sanderson| One could argue that every Terry Gilliam film is a magnum opus—Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, even Lost in La Mancha feels like a definitive statement about human nature in which Gilliam serves as… Continue reading
|Finn Odum| 0. The Fool. I’ve always had a thing for weird little freaks. They’re exactly what they sound like: people whose behavior is absurd or unsettling. They have complicated relationships with subjects like sex, drugs, and religion. They can be repressed or unhinged… Continue reading
|Lucas Hardwick| (And behold, let thine eyes be warned; yay verily, here there be spoilers, so sayeth the Lord.)
One of the cornerstones of any healthy marriage is to go out on a date once in a while. Occasionally, I like to take Mrs. Hardwick to a fancy joint like the McDonald’s… Continue reading
|Jay Ditzer| A new wave band and three guys named William team up for movie soundtrack magic. Like most film directors, the late great William Friedkin had a career of peaks and valleys. After getting his start in a Chicago TV station’s mail room, he eventually began directing… Continue reading
|Luke Mosher| Among the many kinds of new films released every year, I often find animation the most exciting. The form is endlessly mailable, and animators are always finding new techniques to dazzle and new worlds to explore. Takehide Hori’s one-man production… Continue reading
