Isolation and Family, Arthouse and Hollywood, The Mafia and Jesus: The Impossible Marriages in Martin Scorsese’s Filmography

|Ryan Sanderson| I didn’t fall for Scorsese initially, the same way I did for his contemporaries. Raging Bull left me cold. I hated the characters in Goodfellas too much to really latch on. Make no mistake—I encountered plenty of toxic masculinity in adolescence, just a brand that disguised… Continue reading

1917 and the Pitfalls of One-Shot and Long-Shot Filmmaking

|Nicole Rojas-Oltmann| You may have noticed the influx of one-shot and long-shot films in the past two decades. We have camera technology to thank for this. Now film can be made in one go. You know, like theatre has always been done. One-shot and long-shot cinematography pose… Continue reading

This Just In: Audience Manipulation in Johnnie To’s Breaking News 

|Benjamin Jarman| “Image matters most. We have to put on a great show. An eye for an eye. This is the age of the media. The media got us. Now we get back at them.” These are the first lines of dialogue recited by actress Kelly Chen in Johnnie To’s 2004 crime film, Breaking News. Chen Continue reading

Humanity and Stolen Choice in Children of Men

|Matt Lambert| By the time Children of Men plays at the Trylon, my son might be born. It will be my wife and I’s first child. It’s something we’ve waffled on in our marriage for many years. The decision to bring life into the world has changed drastically as I’ve grown older. When I was younger, I thought the idea of… Continue reading

Dialectical Materialism and Proletarian Internationalism: ‘I Am Cuba’

|Jasper Nordin| On July 26, 1953, the Cuban Revolution began. Fidel Castro, leading a force of 136 men, attacked the Moncada military barracks in the capital city of Havana. The goal of this attack was to instigate a wider revolt against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and to… Continue reading

Beyond the Video Store Shelves: How Oldboy Introduced me to a New World of Subtitled Film

|Rowan Smith| When I first started getting more seriously interested in movies, around age thirteen, it was when video stores were on the precipice of catastrophe, though we didn’t know it yet. The business had already largely homogenized, people mostly rented from large chains… Continue reading

Love, Grief, and Reincarnation: The Legacy of Glazer’s Most Controversial Film

|Malcolm Cooke| The scene begins at the opera. Arriving late, Anna (Nicole Kidman) and her fiancé Joseph (Danny Huston) push their way intrusively past a dozen audience members. Once seated, the shot holds on Anna’s face for over two minutes, an image director… Continue reading