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Now that I have a region-free Blu-ray player, I've been able to cycle through my Columbia Noir boxsets. Film noir is a genre I’ve always loved, and these lesser-known movies have really opened up a whole new world to me. And right out of the gate, the very first movie on Columbia Noir #1, Escape in the Fog, had my mind racing. It was an abnormal film, even by noir standards. While its espionage plot feels familiar and its romance seemingly…

Mickey 17 is a movie that has a lot going on. But there’s a simple way to cut through all the noise and get to the core meaning. If you’re a long time reader of Film Colossus, you probably know what I’m going to say. If you’re new here, remember this for the rest of your life. 

The Brutalist is a meditation on the immigrant experience, using the relationship between an idealistic architect and a manipulative magnate as a lens to explore the contradictions of the American Dream.

With Anora, Sean Baker delivers two different films. The first half presents itself as an off-beat rom com about two crazy kids falling in love. Pretty Woman meets Tolstoy meets Harmony Korine. But then the second half turns into In Bruges meets Dostoevsky meets The Princess Bride. Igor spends most of that final stretch giving Anora the same “as you wish” attitude that Wesley gave Buttercup. It’s cool, it’s fun, but Baker also has something to say about intimacy. So let’s explain the ending of Anora. 

Synecdoche, New York is a movie where seemingly every surreal moment is a commentary on life, is part of a larger conversation on how we choose to live. But does that conversation ever build? Does it take shape and build new layers? Does it morph into something ethereal, something that we the viewers can reflect back onto ourselves and our existence?

Sometimes a movie completely surprises you, leads you in a direction you don’t expect. Deerskin was one such film. Georges’ journey is ridiculous, hilarious, demented, shocking. But suddenly, as Denise sees Georges for who he truly is, through the camera, through the jacket, through the veil he’s so clumsily designed, she sees a lonely, dejected man. In this moment, you realize what the movie is truly about, where we’re being led. 

Sideways' depiction of high-functioning depression destroys me every time. I laugh my ass off the whole way through, even during the saddest of moments, because Miles' life is so pathetic and cruel that it verges on absurdity. But it's not absurd - it's very real and honest and true. 

There’s a beautiful moment in Lips of Blood where Frédéric attends a screening of one of Jean Rollin’s films. As Stephen Jones and Kim Newman point out in their commentary, it’s a typical meta moment from this era’s generation of avant-garde genre filmmakers that suddenly transcends and reaches an ethereal plane.