|Bob Aulert| – Oscar Levant. In the realm of meta-cinematic narratives, few films have achieved the level of sharp satire and self-awareness as Robert Altman’s 1992 film The Player. It’s a two hour long “Fuck You” from Altman to the mainstream film industry; a scathing commentary… Continue reading
|Chris Ryba-Tures| There was a time, a baker’s dozen years back, when I couldn’t find a decent old-fashioned donut on this side of the river to save my life. It was the age of The Glazing—when a number of ambitious, inventive Twin Cities doughsmiths began exploring the possibilities… Continue reading
|John Costello| Despite the underlying wartime suspense and tragedy, Five Graves to Cairo (1943) gives the audience ample reason to laugh at the Nazis and their accomplices. The film deflates the legend of Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and constantly demeans… Continue reading
|Patrick Clifford| “Oh man! You’ve never seen Touch of Evil?” “Oh… Man. That first shot!” “Tick, tick, tick, tick… tacka-tooka, tacka-tooka…” This was how my good friend Juan Torres introduced to me to Touch of Evil. Long ago, when we were college students in Chicago. I can still see… Continue reading
|Yuval Klein| At the Mexico–U.S. Border, gangsters and police animate a caustic criminal underbelly. The protagonist, Mike Vargas, is a respected Mexican criminal prosecutor who crosses over to his American newlywed’s home country at the precise moment of an… Continue reading
|MH Rowe| La casa lobo (2018, released in English as The Wolf House) is one of those films based on or inspired by fact that sends you scurrying to the internet to read aghast secret histories you never knew. In this case the history turns out to be a sickening account of… Continue reading
|Finn Odum| I. Gringos en Arica. The first of my three weeks in Arica, a city on the Chilean-Peruvian border, was spent in a beachside hotel. We had free breakfast in the mornings, a pool overlooking the ocean, and most importantly, a bar just a five-minute walk away. Many of us were… Continue reading
|MH Rowe| As quiet and downbeat as it is—as suspicious of institutional authority as it is—The Verdict (1982) is not quite the post-Watergate courtroom drama it appears to be. It traffics instead in a variety of chastened heroism, the kind that comes from finding out that… Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| When I was 13, I was obsessed with the Disney Channel cartoon Kim Possible. The title character was a high school student extracurricular enthusiast with a particular penchant for cheerleading who also flew around the world to fight crime. I was in… Continue reading
| Matthew Tchepikova-Treon | Beyond the hardbody brass hits, kettle drums, soaring guitars, and motoric basslines (that nowadays punctuate every last over-edited theatrical trailer to death), action movie music comes in many forms. In the 1970s, performers like J.J. Johnson (Across 110th Street), Johnny Pate… Continue reading
