A Tale of Two Heroines: Revisiting the Past with Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939)
In the year 1939, two blockbuster movies burst onto the big screen in brilliant technicolor, forever changing the face of American film: Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. On the surface, the heroines of both films have…
Greyhound: Harassed and Helpless
Tom Hanks’ Greyhound doesn’t waste much time on exposition: on-screen text tells you how crucial supply convoys are to the Allies in Europe. A brief flashback introduces you to Hanks’ Commander Krause. But tension and dread is already building by…
Stop Calling Gone with the Wind a "Product of its time"
HBO Max, a streaming service that is still in its infancy, made waves recently when they announced that they were temporarily pulling Gone with the Wind, the 1939 film based on Margaret Mitchell’s novel. The HBO statement reads, “These racist…
Aliens Just Like Us: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) & Under the Skin (2013)
“Every village and small country place is full of people who’ve just come and settled there without any ties to bring them. The big houses have been sold, and the cottages have been converted and changed. And people just come…
Brilliantly Done, Emma.
“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.”…
Review| Wander Darkly (2020)
Wander Darkly tells a story about a couple struggling to make their relationship work as it gets upended by a traumatic event. The story follows Adrienne (Sienna Miller) and Matteo (Diego Luna) as they look back on their relationship. Together…
A Deluge of Dark Water(s): The Dark Waters of Dark Waters (1944), Dark Waters (1993), Dark Water (2002), and Dark Waters (2019)
When I was a child, I thought I was surrounded by bad guys. This is not a metaphor. I had the creeping suspicion that everyone I knew—my grandma, the dentist, the children’s pastor at my church, my pre-school teachers, everybody—was…
Review| Palindrome (2020)
Marcus Flemmings reached out to me after I reviewed his last film, Six Rounds, to view and review his newest film. If you follow my reviews, you might remember that I found Six Rounds to be effective conceptually with the…
How to Watch Star Wars the Right Way: The Flashback Order
The One True Way™ to watch Star Wars is a hotly debated topic in many circles. With the completion of the Skywalker Saga last December and today’s release of the final film to Disney+, there’s no better day to watch…
Review| The Quarry
Scott Teems’ new film, The Quarry, strikes upon two of my deepest obsessions: southern gothic literature and music. It doesn’t have the magical realism of True Detective’s first season and it doesn’t have the grotesquery of the characters of Flannery…