Don’t Ever Trust a Man that Calls You Monkeyface: Masculinity then and now

|Reid Lemker| If you learn one thing after watching Alfred Hitchcock’s 1941 film Suspicion, it should be this: don’t ever go out with a guy that refers to you as “Monkeyface.” I don’t care where they are from, how much money they claim they have, or even if they look like a young… Continue reading

To Love or Leave: The Paradoxical Feminism of Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion

|Chris Polley| “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” Joseph Heller famously wrote in his 1961 wartime satire Catch-22. Taking place during World War II and reveling in the titular paradoxes inherent in the very concepts of warfare and military service… Continue reading

Psychoanalyze Me, Mommy: Making Sense of the Mother Role in Phantom Thread

|Sophie Durbin| Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread tops my shortlist of “Unexpectedly Rewatchable Movies.” On the initial viewing, the film is obviously beautiful, perfectly acted, painstakingly art directed. And yet, it’s an enigma: what is… Continue reading

Schrödinger’s Cat Walks Into a Bar…

|Nazeeh Alghazawneh| “You know how you get rid of crabs? You got to shave one testicle. All the crabs go over to the other testicle, you got to light the hair on fire on that one. When they all go scurrying out, you take an ice pick and you fucking stab every single last one of them!”… Continue reading

The Many Singular Faces of The Master

|Ryan Sanderson| When The Master came out in 2012, a lot of the conversation centered around Scientology–which made sense, at least at first. “Auteur Wunderkind Attacks World’s Most Litigious Religion!” makes for a pretty compelling headline. “Auteur Wunderkind Explores Identity… Continue reading

Music as a Balm: My Appreciation for Magnolia’s Mid-Film Sing-Along

|David Potvin| Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 magnum opus Magnolia is sonically chaotic. There’s no two ways about it. Within the first eleven minutes we meet no less than nine members of the film’s ensemble cast amidst a cacophony of these characters’ morning routines… Continue reading

WTF Frogs!? You know what? Sure. Why not? 

|Allison Vincent| Why Magnolia So Fully Captures the Ennui of the End of the 20th Century | I need to start this post by explicitly stating that I am a millennial. Trust me, it’s important. Technically, because I was born in 1987, I’m an “elder” millennial or geriatric millennial if you’re… Continue reading

Thelma and Louise and Everything Since

|Nicole Rojas-Oltmanns| Geena Davis, who plays Thelma, remarked, “After Thelma and Louise (1991, directed by Ridley Scott), people said things would improve for women in film. They didn’t.”¹ So, in 2004 she created The Geena Davis Institute to better understand disparities… Continue reading

From the Valley to the Mountain: The Inevitable Success of Paul Thomas Anderson

|Brogan Earney| “I have seen the new Quentin Tarantino, and his name is Paul Thomas Anderson,” wrote Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman after watching the premiere of Boogie Nights at the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival. A line that recognizes the achievement… Continue reading