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<\/a><\/p>\n\nI launched the column with an essay about Frank O’Hara and his love of the movies<\/a>. <\/p>\n He makes his case: \u201cIt\u2019s true that fresh air is good for the body \/ but what about the soul that grows in darkness embossed by silvery images.\u201d This is one of the most accurate depictions in literature of what actually goes on \u201cin the movies.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nThe fun of this column is “sky’s the limit” in terms of subject matter. It’s basically: Shit I’ve Always Wanted to Write About. Thank you, Film Comment<\/i>, for validating my weird brain. For the second installment of the column I wrote about the sexual\/romantic tension between Hicks and Ripley in Aliens<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n Eyes glinting with flirty mischief and intimacy, he sends her off with, \u201cDon\u2019t be gone long, Ellen.\u201d It\u2019s as though they\u2019re suddenly in bed, in a world where they could be who they want to be to each other. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n \nIn the third installment, I wrote about Marlon Brando’s physicality<\/a>, as expressed so perfectly by David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest<\/i>.<\/p>\n When Brando was at his best, everything was in proportion. You don\u2019t sense effort. Most crucially, Brando underlined nothing. His instincts led him into opposition. This wasn\u2019t just bratty anti-authoritarianism. This was actor-as-tuning-fork to his own sense of truth. A conventional actor might shout an angry line. Brando would whisper it, turning the scene on its ear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nNext, I wrote about Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue<\/i><\/a> and Walt Whitman’s bicentennial. Both. <\/p>\n In the poem \u201cThe Wound-Dresser,\u201d Whitman describes his experiences working in a Civil War hospital, and how he remained \u201cimpassive\u201d with the wounded and yet \u201cdeep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.\u201d Sam Shepard, reminiscing about the healing effect of the Rolling Thunder tour on audiences, says, \u201cRock and roll is a kind of medicine.\u201d A \u201cwound-dresser\u201d for a hurting America. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about the never-before-seen material in Sylvia Plath’s recently published full correspondence<\/a>, which shows – for the first time – the extent of her cinephilia. <\/p>\n For the first time, Plath is revealed as an adventurous and voracious moviegoer. She lived in a very exciting era for film, coming of age in the 1950s. While the \u201cfootball romances\u201d were, indeed, depressing, the 1950s also saw the influx of foreign films onto American soil, Japanese, French, Swedish, Russian, with art houses proliferating, these movies providing glimpses into other cultures and new ways of seeing. Plath was an active participant in all of it, joining the Film Society while studying at Cambridge on a Fulbright scholarship, sometimes seeing as many as three movies a day. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about Tom Noonan’s harrowing film about urban loneliness, What Happened Was<\/i><\/a>. <\/p>\n Jackie and Michael come into the date with compromised emotional immune systems. Whatever resilience they may have had once is long gone. \u201cThat which does not kill you makes you stronger\u201d is a lie, or at least a \u201cfiction\u201d parroted by people who have been privileged enough not to know real suffering. There\u2019s something pathological and, dare I say, capitalistic, about the phrase. Being \u201cstrong\u201d isn\u2019t the only positive value in life. \u201cThat which does not kill you\u201d can kill other things, too, things like vulnerability, humor, the capacity to connect with others\u2014in short, the things that make life worth living. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about the glorious “back-ting” tradition<\/a>, actors who can convey an entire story with their backs to the camera. Examples abound. <\/p>\n In his lonely back, we can see his terrible awareness of the brutal life he has lived and what it has cost him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about Dennis Hopper’s raging punk rock manifesto, Out of the Blue<\/i><\/a>, a long-forgotten and hard-to-see film, now restored and (I’m sure) soon to be available. <\/p>\n As CeBe, Linda Manz gives one of the great teenage performances of all time. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nThis was something that had been percolating for a long long time. I wanted to write about how people who come out of comedy, improv or sketch, often make the greatest dramatic actors, blowing away their “serious” counterparts. And so I finally wrote about it<\/a>. <\/p>\n Watch Wiig in Bridesmaids and then watch Hateship Loveship, Welcome to Me, and Skeleton Twins in succession. Each character is so distinct it\u2019s like Wiig swaps out her soul for each role. (The last three films all came out in 2014, and the fact that Wiig didn\u2019t get more accolades for these transformations\u2014none of which involved radical shifts in appearance or self-congratulatory weight-loss\/gain\u2014is evidence of how actors known for comedy aren\u2019t taken as seriously as their dramatic counterparts). Throw in Wiig\u2019s lunatic Saturday Night Live sketch \u201cLiza Minnelli Turns Off a Lamp\u201d to get the full picture of her gift. I think Wiig is one of the best actresses working today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI focused on Matthias Schoenaerts’ ongoing explorations<\/a> of his characters’ tormented bound-up masculinity. He’s really untouchable. He’s going where Brando went, where De Niro went. It’s a place only men can go. He’s giving us insider information. Without protecting himself. <\/p>\n The moment is so vulnerable and lonely it\u2019s almost unwatchable. Jacky\u2019s world is comfortless. Schoenaerts often plays such men.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about awesome death scenes in cinema<\/a>. This was super fun and it exploded on Twitter. I couldn’t keep up with all the replies, people sharing their favorite deaths scenes. It was great!<\/p>\n Child actors often toss themselves into death scenes with fearless gusto. I call this the \u201cBang Bang You\u2019re Dead\u201d School of Acting. Watch the swan dives of children playing cops and robbers in the backyard and you\u2019ll see total commitment to the imaginary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nIt was a great pleasure to interview director Brett Hanover about Rukus<\/i><\/a>, his slightly unclassifiable documentary-video-diary-narrative feature, which we had awarded Best Features in the Hometowners category last year at Indie Memphis. You should all see Rukus<\/i>. He’s released it online. <\/p>\n ?I never wanted you to forget you were watching a re-enactment. I wanted that alienation effect. You\u2019re trusting it as a document of something<\/em>, of some<\/em> version of these real events, but also as a document of the re-enactment process.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI had fun writing about memorable experiences seeing movies in a theatre in a packed house<\/a>. For me, there’s nothing like it. I’m so glad I saw Wolf of Wall Street<\/i> (just one example) surrounded by a crowd. <\/p>\n In the final standoff with the Nazis, the tension in the theater was palpable, and everyone burst into applause as Bergman and Grant made their getaway. It was an exhilarating turn-around. Notorious is one of my favorite movies, and re-watching it now is enriched by the memory of that Film Forum audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n I wrote about Michael Rymer’s 1995 film Angel Baby<\/i><\/a>, which has haunted me for decades, ever since I saw it during its first release. It’s streaming now (after long unavailability). You should see it. <\/p>\n The intimacy these actors create with each other is so visceral you can almost smell it. The final 20 minutes of the film is so harrowing I have remembered it almost shot for shot, even though I haven\u2019t seen it since 1995.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nAlthough it feels mean to “pick favorites” among my columns (thus far), this one – about the “tomboy films” of the 1970s<\/a> – is probably my favorite. <\/p>\n They were scrappy street urchins. They talked like gangsters. Sometimes they were actual criminals. They smoked cigarettes. They sassed authority figures, and when told to knock it off, they sassed even more. They flipped the world the bird. They were the smartest person in any room, even though they were between the ages of 9 and 14, and even though they were girls. Theirs was an ongoing act of civil disobedience against the limits imposed on girls, the idea that girls should behave one way, boys another. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI will never be done talking about Kristen Stewart<\/a>. It’s been an ongoing theme, and so I figured I’d address it in the column. <\/p>\n There\u2019s a part of her that always seems a little bit uncomfortable being looked at, but what is special about Stewart\u2014and not often remarked-upon\u2014is that she doesn\u2019t try to combat this. She doesn\u2019t try to correct it. She just lets us see that part of her. She lets us see her discomfort and shyness. This is where her magic really lies. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about Sophia Takal’s first two films<\/a>, Green<\/i> (2011) and Always Shine<\/i> (2016). <\/p>\n This is what Takal is after: what things feel<\/em> like, the peril in relationships, in bonding, in intimacy, particularly for women. Miscommunication, jealousy, social pressures, create a pressure cooker environment where freedom is impossible. This is mostly the realm of melodrama, not kitchen-sink realism, but it\u2019s also the realm of horror, and both Green<\/em> and Always Shine<\/em> read as horror films, although the horror is hard to point to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about Into Invisible Light<\/i>, a film written and directed by Shelagh Carter<\/a>. <\/p>\n The best way I can put it is that Into Invisible Light is a movie for grownups. It\u2019s not about the first flush of hope. It\u2019s a movie about flawed human people with some miles on them, miles where things have been dropped along the way, things they all thought were lost forever. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI reviewed the Polish documentary Communion<\/i><\/a>, an incredible directorial debut from Anna Zamecka. <\/p>\n The camera doesn’t rove around the room looking for conflict, for reaction shots, to “up” the tension, all of the technical tropes that have seeped into the culture via reality television. Zamecka’s approach enforces a certain amount of distance from her subjects. We can see it all, how overworked Ola is, how helpless Marek is, how on top of one another they are in that apartment. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI reviewed The Heiresses<\/i> for Ebert.<\/a><\/p>\n Chela is so weighted down at the start of the film that the lightening of her mood is wonderful to see but it’s also alarming. Hope brings with it the possibility of heartbreak, and Brun draws you totally into that experience, with little to no explanatory dialogue. What a remarkable performance. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI reviewed my friend Larry Clarke’s wonderful directorial debut 3 Days with Dad<\/i><\/a> (he also wrote the script), featuring a murderer’s row of talented actors.<\/p>\n Bob is screaming, the kids are screaming, they\u2019re moving him and his IV drip across the room and it\u2019s MAYHEM. It\u2019s funny but it\u2019s also not. No one can prepare you for a moment like that. It\u2019s unimaginable until it is upon you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about Sounder<\/a> for Film Comment<\/i>.<\/p>\n Winfield and Tyson, with no dialogue, suggest the intimacy and heat between this couple, how connected they are. When Nathan comes home after serving his sentence, there\u2019s a moment where they catch eyes over the kids\u2019 heads, longing to finally be alone together. In these scenes is the rich texture of life. It feels more authentic than an uninterrupted parade of misery. Or, to put it another way: the joy is as real as the misery. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI absolutely loved Ruben Brandt, Collector<\/em> and had a blast writing my review<\/a>. <\/p>\n With a fast-paced story spanning the globe, and images like a fluidly-undulating art-literate acid flashback, “Ruben Brandt, Collector” is like “To Catch a Thief” as filtered through the multi-eyeballed gaze of Joan Mir\u00f3, or “The Pink Panther” as imagined by Pablo Picasso. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI reviewed Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life<\/i> for Film Comment<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n Infertility\u2014like old age\u2014is a topic many people don\u2019t want to look at. It cuts too close to home and provokes all kinds of conflicting feelings, especially in a culture that so prizes parenthood and\u2014especially\u2014motherhood as the be-all and end-all of female experience. This is one of the many reasons Private Life feels almost dangerous. It\u2019s stepping into new ground. It\u2019s opening a long-closed door.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI loved Gaspar Noe’s Climax<\/em>. I reviewed for Ebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n The dancers come from all walks of life, but everyone goes down with the ship, clinging to their final shreds of sanity. There’s a mournfulness in all of this: “Climax” is haunted by the joy of the first dance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about Robert Flaherty’s influential (for good or ill) documentary Man of Aran<\/i> for Film Comment<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n The shark hunt is followed by a sequence where the men row home in the teeth of a storm, the currach buffeted by the waves. It was as dangerous as it looks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI reviewed Sebasti\u00e1n Lelio’s Gloria Bell<\/i> – an American remake of his own movie – for Ebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gloria and Arnold don’t so much “hit it off” as they decide to try each other on. They have sex, they talk, he reads her a poem, they play paintball. Meanwhile, life goes on, and the “life goes on” aspect of “Gloria Bell” is one of its distinguishing characteristics. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI interviewed Dan Callahan about his book<\/a> The Art of American Screen Acting, Volume 2<\/i>.<\/p>\n Callahan<\/em>: Pacino is so in touch with evil, and he didn\u2019t need to be. He could have done cute victim parts, which he did in Scarecrow. But his actual interest is the underside of being cute and seductive which is: this cute seductive person might be evil. In The Local Stigmatic, he plays more of a small-time crook than Michael Corleone and yet it\u2019s more concentrated in a way because it\u2019s a short film. The Godfather is Pacino\u2019s great statement on evil.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nUpon hearing the news that the upcoming season of Supernatural<\/i> (the 15th) would be its last, I wrote a long essay about how I “tripped over” the series<\/a> and how my obsession was born.<\/p>\n The third episode was when I felt some familiar \u2026 stirrings. Stirrings of personal investment. A layer of complexity was added to what I was seeing. There was a mournfulness in episode 3 that I responded to, a deepening of this Dean character.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I reviewed the appalling The Haunting of Sharon Tate<\/i> for Ebert<\/a>. <\/p>\n In an insidious way, Farrands’ approach\u2014these alternate versions where Tate gets to act “heroically”blames the victim. It suggests: Couldn’t Tate have shown more \u201cagency\u201d that night? What if she had fought back? Wouldn’t it have been great if Sharon had been more “badass” in the face of her impending death? If only she had listened to her intuition, maybe she wouldn’t have been murdered. Alternate histories can be extremely cathartic. But not like this. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI really loved Wild Nights with Emily<\/em>, and had a lot of fun writing my review for Ebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n Olnek takes one of the many Emily Dickinson theories – that the famous “spinster recluse” had a lifelong love affair with Susan Gilbert, her childhood friend and eventual sister-in-law – and runs with it, has fun with it, flings open the doors, letting in light and passion and life. This could have been a dreadfully dreary affair if the approach had been didactic. In Olnek’s hands, it’s a romp, but it’s a romp with real bite. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI reviewed Suzannah Herbert and Lauren Belfer\u2019s documentary Wrestle<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n It\u2019s not just about wrestling. The team practices have a sense of real urgency, they\u2019re like military drills, getting the boys ready for compat under fire. It\u2019s life or death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI interviewed director Lian Lunson about her beautiful film Waiting for the Miracle to Come<\/i><\/a>, starring Willie Nelson and Charlotte Rampling and Sophie Lowe. Shot entirely on Willie Nelson’s ranch in Texas. <\/p>\n Lian Lunson<\/em>: I feel very honored and privileged and lucky that these people allowed me to make Miracle. It\u2019s very hard to make a film like this these days. The films I love \u2013 films like Ponette and Baghdad Cafe \u2026 these films leave you with something. The people who allowed me to make Miracle knew it would be a challenge, but they helped me to do it. That doesn\u2019t happen very often. Without them, I would never have gotten to do it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote the cover story for the May-June 2019 issue of Film Comment, on Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s the romanticism of being in an artistic headspace, of putting yourself and your dreams and passions out there for people to see. Julie stands off to the side, looking on at what she has created. All of these people have come together to bring her vision to fruition. Collaboration like this is its own addiction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n \nI reviewed Joe Berlinger’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Vile and Evil<\/i><\/a> for Ebert. <\/p>\n As Ted Bundy, Efron gets to use his natural assets\u2014his face, his body, his charisma\u2014and he gets to use them full-bore. Often really beautiful actors feel the need to “ugly” themselves up in order to be taken seriously. Efron so far has resisted. He has old-school movie star wattage and an ability to project his essence through the screen. Using his animal charm in service of Ted Bundy is so disturbing, but it works in subtextual ways, providing the “missing piece” when people ask why and how Bundy could have happened. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nFor Criterion’s “Songbook” column, I wrote about the use of “Love is Strange” in Terrence Malick’s Badlands<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n In \u201cNebraska,\u201d Bruce Springsteen imagines the story from Starkweather\u2019s point of view, paraphrasing what the killer actually said after he was caught, \u201cI can\u2019t say that I\u2019m sorry for the things that we done \/ At least for a little while, sir, me and her, we had us some fun.\u201d Staring at those words, the mind goes blank. In that blankness lies Badlands<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n \nFor Oscilloscope’s Musings blog, I wrote about a long-standing obsession: scenes where men look at themselves in the mirror<\/a>. <\/p>\n Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s epic, Apocalypse Now<\/em> begins with a hallucinatory sequence showing a PTSD-rattled Martin Sheen, holed up in a hotel room in Saigon, tormented by memories. In one shocking moment, Sheen stands unsteadily, and lurches around in front of the mirror, flailing his arms out in imitation martial-arts moves, an attempt to combat his helplessness and anguish, his impotence. But the gap between reality and fantasy is too great, and he, like Richard III, smashes the mirror.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nI wrote about the really good Mouthpiece<\/i><\/a> for Rogerebert.com. Check this movie out!<\/p>\n Needing characters\u2014particularly female characters\u2014to be strong all the time is just as limiting as any other kind of stereotype. Being vulnerable is not being weak. Not knowing what to do is not being weak. It’s being human. In an increasingly corporatized world, where franchises suck up all the oxygen, where small personal films can barely get made anymore, “Mouthpiece” vibrates with the urgency behind its shared expression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nFor Film Comment<\/i> (and the anniversary of D-Day), I wrote about John Ford’s great war film They Were Expendable<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n They Were Expendable<\/em> is the kind of film where all you have to do is scan the faces of everyone on screen\u2014the stars, the co-stars and the extras\u2014to see the stakes of war. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nAgain for Film Comment<\/i>, I wrote about the smokin-white-hot sexual chemistry in Love Crazy<\/i> and The More the Merrier<\/i><\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nReviews\/Interviews\/Etc.<\/h1>\n
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