CATCHING UP WITH FILM - FILM CRITICISM WITH AN EYE ON A PERSONAL CANON

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. Director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo was able to get After.Life on the strength of the screenplay, even though she had never made a feature-length film before. Indeed, the story and concept of After.Life is a bendy narrative full of twists and delightful ambiguity. Anna (Christina Ricci) is in a car acciden

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. Out of all the films that I have seen so far in this illuminating marathon, In My Skin has to be the most visceral. I will admit that I have often picked at dead skin and scabs and admired it even as it made slightly queasy to enjoy the minor catharsis mixed with pain that accompanies every pick. In My Ski

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. Though I have seen many films directed by Claire Denis, she is someone whose work I grapple with and I want to continue to grapple with. I didn’t get Beau Travail the first time I watched it, or the second time, or even the third time, but I knew that I wanted to keep engaging with her work because the way

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. Clearly, Office Killer was going for a certain indie pedigree of well-shot genre pictures with interesting twists. Famous producer Christine Vachon is attached to this movie who made the careers of famous queer auteurs like Todd Haynes and Kimberly Pierce. The cast has some recognizable faces even if none

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. I didn’t quite know what to expect with Blood & Donuts, but what I got was a strong Jim Jarmusch sensibility. When I think of Jarmusch, I tend to think of filming largely at night (check), working-class characters (check), anachronistic songs like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “I Put a Spell On You” (huge check).

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard of a movie that caused such a fuss that has been so profoundly forgotten by the public at large. Apparently both Madonna and Kim Basinger were attached to play the titular role that eventually went to Sherilyn Fenn of Twin Peaks fame. Basinger went into bankruptcy when she w

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. I have yet to watch the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, the popular and perhaps most iconic and sneakily influential TV show of the 90’s. I know enough about the show that the subversiveness of its narrative and the complex relationships between the characters are largely absent from this Disney Channe

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. I had only seen the original Nightmare on Elm Street and had only heard in passing about how the series became more comic and self-aware in tone and so did Freddy. So it would make sense that Freddy’s Dead almost completely fails as a horror movie. There’s way too much pandering to young audiences with the

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. My first thought when I saw Rainbow Harvest in this movie was “Lydia Deetz!” She looks so much like the main character in Beetlejuice that I was almost sure that this movie was copying her. In fact, the plot of Mirror Mirror isn’t too dissimilar to that movie. Megan moves into a new house with her mother w

Horror and films directed by women are both big blind spots for me, so I am taking this deep dive into some of the more outre films I have come across in my movie watching. Stephen King needs to be kept as far away as possible from his film adaptations. King famously decried Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining for straying too far from his book and even directed his own inferior version for television years later. His only directorial credit is the hilariously terrible Maximum Over