The first scene of the Stuart Gordon’s 1985 cult classic Re-Animator shows us our lead, our anti-hero protagonist, in a state of panic. In the halls of the stately University of Zurich, Herbert West ...
Film
Editor: Sharon Marcus
Policing the Borders of “Zootopia”
Popular children’s literature and cinema tend to confront racism by using fanciful zoological metaphors to deliver two important messages ...
On Our Nightstands: Movies Edition
Last week, in anticipation of the Oscars, we published a special “Women and Movies” issue of Public Books. Now that the statuettes have been handed out and the glitter has settled, we look back on ...
A Brief History of Women Accepting Oscars
From the comfort of the couch, the Academy Awards hold a perverse attraction. What will fall flat more often: the dreadful jokes, or the award recipients as they clamor up the stairs to claim their ...
Virtual Roundtable on Women Directors
It’s no secret that Hollywood has a diversity problem, especially when it comes to hiring directors ...
Taking a Nine-Year-Old to See “The Danish Girl”
I decided about a year ago, when my younger child turned eight, that Pixar and I were calling it quits. Don’t get me wrong, Up and Toy Story were great, but given the choice between a real movie and ...
Close to the Bone: An Interview with Filmmaker Debra Granik
Debra Granik is the director and co-writer of Winter’s Bone, which was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Her latest film, the documentary Stray Dog ...
A Lesbian “Carol” for Christmas
As we approach the crest of film awards season frenzy, Carol, Todd Haynes’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel, The Price of Salt, still in limited release, has captured the imagination of ...
“I Just Wanted People to Hear my Voice”: An Interview with Holly Woodlawn
On December 6, 2015, Holly Woodlawn, the film and cabaret performer known as one of the Warhol Superstars and an inspiration for Lou Reed’s famous song “A Walk on the Wild Side,” died of cancer ...
Suffragettes Take Hollywood
An industrial laundry in 1912 London, the steam infusing the air, the sweat on the workers’ faces so vivid the viewer herself feels the heat. These laundries were not only literal sweatshops; they ...
When Art Disrupts Life
Since its debut at last year’s Sundance festival, the raucous, gorgeous new feature Tangerine has received plenty of well-deserved praise. It has been called, alternately, a ...
“If Only I Could Direct Its Course”: On Pedro Costa
One way to get talking about the films of the Portuguese director Pedro Costa, which often seem designed to defy verbal summary, is to focus on what they refuse to show. The shot that introduces ...
Canine Control
Kornél Mundruczó’s White God has one of those premises that feels unique but also strangely inevitable: a mixed-breed dog named Hagen, abused by everyone except the 13-year-old girl who loved him ...
Let’s All Inhale: Pynchon Goes to the Movies
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Paul Thomas Anderson makes a revealing comment about his artistic choices as a director: “If you can convince yourself that there’s some link to reality ...
The Teflon Kid: How Annie Enables Apathy About Inequality
What’s not to like about seeing an adorable black child nestled up with a baby animal on the cover of the New York Times Style Magazine? The composition of this shot links child actor Quvenzhané ...
Translating the Architecture of Desire: An Interview with Wallace Shawn
Well over a dozen years in the making, Wallace Shawn’s theatrical collaboration with André Gregory on Henrik Ibsen’s 1892 play A Master Builder opened this summer in New York theaters—movie theaters ...
Linklater’s Gooey Realism
Richard Linklater’s acclaimed Boyhood is an ambitious film about a Texas boy named Mason, a millennial everyman played by Ellar Coltrane, as he matures from ages 6 to 18. Along the way, he proceeds ...
Organic Machines
Matthew Barney and Edward Burtynsky are two contemporary artists not typically discussed in the same sentence. Barney is a provocateur known largely for his elaborately staged films filled with ...
Who is General T?
By now the March 30, 2005 Powerball drawing seems to have taken on the workings of a tall tale: In a pot nearing $14 million, Powerball officials usually expect four to five second-place ...
Forgotten Woman
When we think of the ’30s film musical, we tend to picture Fred and Ginger gliding through the polished worlds of Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), and Shall We Dance (1937). Earlier in the ...