Watching the Watcher, by Noni Ford

Why do so many pieces of media that involve an overbearing authoritarian government feature male leads who are working from within the system when they begin to grow conscious of the rot and corruption around them? While watching Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, I could not help but see the parallels between the central figure of Gerd Wiesler and Fahrenheit 451’s Guy Montag, along with 1984’s Winston Smith. While the aforementioned…

Girls Running the World, by TammyJo Eckhart

All 50 states of this United States of America host a weeklong program attended by young people picked by a sponsoring American Legion (or American Legion Auxiliary Unit in the case of “Girls States”). To be chosen, an applicant must have finished her junior year at a sponsored high school. Other criteria seem to vary from state to state, but concern about current and government events, as well as academic and personal character…

Farrebique: Where Time Stands and Progress Whispers, by Ahmed Tahsin Shams

Rejected by Cannes, revered by history, Georges Rouquier’s Farrebique (English: The Four Seasons, France) is a cinematic slow burn, capturing a world on the cusp of change through the eyes of those who must decide: resist or adapt? When Farrebique was submitted to the first Cannes Film Festival in 1946, it was rejected outright. One jury member infamously dismissed it with these words: “I don’t consider cow dung to…

Radiohead’s Cinema of Sound, by Chris Forrester

“I had never even seen a shooting star before… I looked up. I thought it was fireworks. A teardrop of fire shot from space and disappeared behind the church where the syrupy River Arno crawled. Radiohead had the heavens on their side.” — Brent DiCrescenzo, in a 2000 review of Radiohead’s Kid A for Pitchfork

I used to think it was hyperbolic, beginning a review that way. Invoking the heavens, conjuring such a…

These Are Our Leaders? An Analysis of Rumours, by Noni Ford

As the G7 summit world leaders come together to write a joint statement informing the world of their stance on an “important” political issue, it seems like they have their work cut out for them. They pose elegantly, looking jovial and capable for the photographers as they begin their meeting; they chat with each other amiably; and they convene for a lavish dinner reflecting on the history of this…

Kneecap (2024): Be the Bullet, by Michaela Owens

It isn’t controversial to say that the musical biopic isn’t exactly the freshest genre out there. It’s easy enough to guess what the story beats will be, what songs will be highlighted, and what “fateful” moments will be inorganically spotlighted, but every now and then, you come across an example of the genre that reminds you why filmmakers can’t resist this type of narrative. The (somewhat fictionalized) origin story of the Belfast…

“Now is Now”: Why Perfect Days (2023) is an Interesting Example of One of My Favorite Subgenres, by Jesse Pasternack

Every cinephile enjoys coining a term to describe their favorite subgenre. There’s something satisfying about taking a series of disparate films, drawing connections between them, and creating a name that describes them perfectly, a little like how you might wrap a little bow around a present. Whether it’s Quentin Tarantino classifying everything from Rio Bravo (1959) to Dazed and Confused…

Lost in a Forest, All Alone: The Beast (in the Jungle), by Chris Forrester

It’s with a shattering intensity that the protagonist of The Beast in the Jungle, Henry James’s 1903 novella about a man plagued by a fear of some awful fate so intense he can only think of it as a Beast lurking just out of sight, realizes the irony of that fate — that in the isolation of his fear he has condemned himself to a life…