The Monster in the Pulpit: The Night Of The Hunter and the Evil America Wasn’t Ready To See
Charles Laughton only directed one film, and for decades that fact has hung over The Night of the Hunterlike one of […]
Film Essays
Punch-Drunk Love and the Violence of Loneliness
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love begins like an anxiety attack. Before dialogue establishes character or narrative, Anderson presents emptiness: a
John Hughes and the Architecture of Adolescence
John Hughes and the Mythology of the American Teenager Few filmmakers understood adolescence the way John Hughes did. Not the
YouTube Is Becoming the Sundance of the 1990s
Over the past several years, a quiet shift has been taking place within the film industry. While much of the
Walking the Demon Road: Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance and the Birth of a Samurai Icon
There are films that enter a collection as objects of curiosity, and then there are films that reopen the entire
Possession and Pleasure in In the Realm of the Senses
Released in 1976 and still censored in Japan decades later, the film exists in a strange cultural space: simultaneously treated
Haunted by Cinema: Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House and the Art of Controlled Chaos
There are horror films that unsettle through atmosphere, horror films that terrify through violence, and horror films that rely on
Between Worlds: Grief, Labor, and the Unseen in Personal Shopper
There’s a particular kind of defensiveness that emerges whenever an art-house film slips, however briefly, into the mainstream. It’s the
Bound and the Architecture of Desire
Before The Matrix rewired the grammar of blockbuster cinema, Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski debuted with something far more intimate—and,
The Audience Is the Target: On Funny Games
Michael Haneke’s Funny Games does not simply unsettle. It accuses. What begins with the familiar architecture of a home-invasion thriller