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Immortality Game Review
Where is Marissa Marcel? On Friday, I gushed to a friend about this game I was playing called Immortality. I told her the gameplay was fantastic, that the method of interactivity was so simple yet so innovative at the same time. I told her the story was fascinating to explore. I told her that, as…
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Body Heat
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan, 1981 Watching this, I couldn’t help but think about Double Indemnity, to which this film owes its life. But as the trap closed around hapless Ned, I started to think about another female-driven heist movie; Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. And I thought about how the two most base human needs- love and…
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Local Hero
Directed by Bill Forsyth, 1983 “The modern world offers many alternatives to the security of the family unit.” I was thinking about this movie a lot the past week or so, especially about the ending. An empty apartment, a ringing phone. The promise of change. A lovely, understated ending to a lovely and understated movie.…
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Sleepless in Seattle
Directed by Nora Ephron, 1993 This begins with such tenderness and then falls into Looney Tunes-esque capers and silliness. If you want to make a screwball, make a screwball (I love screwballs!) but this hits a strange and uneven tonal balance. Poor Bill Pullman only exists to be put upon. (Best moment in the movie-…
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The Matrix Resurrections
Directed by Lana Wachowski, 2021 A two-and-a-half-hour act one, overly burdened with the dozens of plates it has to spin just to get us moving again after twenty years. Ends just when it starts. I wish that Wachowski had committed to the confusion, and had Neo played by his alter ego of the old man…
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Death Proof
AN: originally posted on July 6, 2016, on my old blog. During a class on the Renaissance, a history professor of mine once started talking about the concept of artificiality. He said that the word artificial originally comes from the word “artifice”, which means “craftiness”, or “making art”. In the Renaissance, “artificial” was a compliment.…
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Reservoir Dogs
Directed by Quentin Tarantino, 1991 AN: this was originally posted on July 6, 2016, on my old blog. As I watch more and more Quentin Tarantino movies it becomes clear to me that the central point around which his entire career pivots is masculinity. Whether his films feature women prominently (Kill Bill, Death Proof) or…
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Picnic at Hanging Rock
Directed by Peter Weir, 1975 AN: this was originally posted on July 6, 2016, on my old blog. On St. Valentine’s Day in the year 1900, during a sweltering Australian summer, the students at a girls’ school take a trip to a nearby rock formation called Hanging Rock. Though they are advised not to climb the…
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Black Narcissus
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947 AN: originally posted on July 6, 2016 to my old blog. At the beginning of Black Narcissus, the nun Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) rings a bell to summon the villagers living in the valley below. She stands at the cliff’s edge and looks down into the canopy below, down…
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Dogtooth
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, 2010. AN: originally posted on July 6, 2016 to my old blog. Dogtooth opens with a tape recorder, a woman’s voice teaching a vocabulary lesson. She defines the sea as a leather armchair, “like the one we have in the living room”. A highway is a very strong wind. An excursion is…
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