Screengem: The spittoon in Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
Old pals John Wayne (as Sheriff John T. Chance) and Ward Bond (as Pat Wheeler, soon to be murdered, shot…
Recent Posts
Deceit is in the Details: Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity
“The living room was still stuffy from last night’s cigars. The windows were closed and the sunshine coming in through…
A family with a dinner table: Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Still Walking
Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Still Walking (Aruitemi aruitemo, 2008) starts with two women preparing a meal, the older woman giving advice to…
The Future of Class Consciousness in Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets
Imagine a giant city floating in space, built not by one species, but a thousand; not as part of a…
Ruggedly Masculine – Rod Taylor in The Birds
When Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) first meets Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) in the bird shop in San Francisco, his look…
Parting Shots: Uncut Gems and Where to Find Them
In a podcast almost as heady and packed as their latest film Uncut Gems (2019) and cheekily titled “Seduce and Destroy,”…
Facing the uncanny: Conor McPherson’s The Eclipse
A man is driving home at night in the Irish countryside when suddenly the ghostly figure of his father-in-law (Jim…
Coming of Age, or, the Inversion of Expectations in The Last Picture Show
Life is not a stroll across a field – Boris Pasternak Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971) reveals, in…
Lady Bird: When the Bird Has Flown the Nest
Fierce, funny, and willfully independent, Lady Bird (2017) diverges from traditional coming-of-age narratives to feature a mother and daughter relationship major…
