When creating and selling culture, you’re also selling a story about that culture—for good and for ill.
Tag: Film
Buster Keaton Falls Up
Comedy demands a fall guy—someone upon whom the absurdity crashes and yet who emerges unscathed. And in comedy, Buster Keaton remains unrivaled.
“Parasite” and the Plurality of Empire
Bong Joon-ho’s critique in Parasite is less of “universal” capitalism than of the particular imperialisms that have shaped Korean life.
India’s Fans and India’s Future
Obsession is one of the hallmarks of love in Indian cinema: specifically, a love that breaks down borders.
Deep Focus: “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming”
It’s hardly a secret, but, for a land that bills itself as a land of freedom and ...
How Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” Misses the Mark
When in December I heard an interview with Greta Gerwig on All Things ...
TV’s Golden Age of Female Serial Killers
Female killers are all the rage in literature and television. My Sister, the Serial Killer, for example, has caused a stir in the literary world. Killing Eve boasts a large ...
Exile by the Bay
Imagining home is an inescapable preoccupation of disinherited people. Of all the possessions lost or denied, none is more precious than the security and feeling of belonging that a genuine home ...
Cute. Dangerous. Asian American. “Gremlins” @35
Gremlins—released 35 years ago this summer—is about a cute, furry ...
Be Kind, Rewind
Biologists use the term endling to refer to the last remaining member of a particular species. As of May 2019, there is only one remaining Blockbuster video store left, located in Bend, Oregon ...
On the Brink of Failure
“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” Compared to ...
On the Absurdity of Ethical Capitalism
I worked two “jobs” during my first summer as a graduate student in Indiana. One involved telemarketing research, convincing people to answer telephone ...
Toward an Ecological Cinema
In France, a recent legislative bill identified the task of bringing about “corporate transformation” as one of the major challenges of the 21st century ...
“Wendy and Lucy” @10
Quick! Name an important fiction film of the Great Recession. The Big Short? Yes, surprisingly fun, considering the topic. Margin Call? Love it, except for the ...
The Gay Conversion Therapy Memoir
“To continually go before God and ask for forgiveness and make promises you know you can’t keep is more than I can take. I feel it is making a mockery of God and ...
Anna Biller on Classic Films and Twitter Feminisms
To date, the independent filmmaker Anna Biller has tweeted somewhere in the ...
Do Images Still Help Us See?
Contrary to what its title might suggest, Hito Steyerl’s latest collection of essays does not explain how to avoid customs charges at dubious borders. Much more ...
Against Cuteness: “Bambi” @90
Felix Salten’s Bambi: A Life in the Woods—which first appeared in English 90 years ago this summer—is now better known as the inspiration for Disney’s charming ...
Burns and Novick, Masters of False Balancing
When Karl Marlantes takes the screen during The Vietnam War, he says ...
Virtual Roundtable on “Get Out”
In the weeks immediately following its release, Jordan Peele’s Get Out quickly established itself as the crossover film ...