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A hard rain is gonna fall. — Bob Dylan
Jesus Christ, they’ve done it. — Bob, Threads
In late September of 1984 I was in my home town preparing to go back to university, having graduated with a good enough Bachelor’s degree to continue to a Master’s. (more…)
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Many years ago, in what now seems to be almost a past life, I used to be quite the cinephile. I loved films. I loved the French Nouvelle Vague. I loved Italian neorealismo. I became enamored of the great auteurs. On many occasions, I would drive to faraway cinemas in the big cities so I could see films, usually foreign or independent ones, that were not going to play in my hometown movie theatres. When I was even younger, I used to eagerly await the Friday edition of the local newspaper so I could read the movie reviews of the weekend’s new releases. When I reached my college years, I took a few elective courses on film history and production. (more…)
You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema here.
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Do you ever find yourself bored on the couch, surfing nearly-identical streaming services or, if you still have it, cable? Do you succumb to watching something you’ve already seen in lieu of trying something new? In an era of content overload, there’s never been so little to watch or read. The sheer amount of garbage that is pumped onto screen and page alike almost seems by design, and it probably is.
Luckily, we have Counter-Currents’ Trevor Lynch book series, the latest of which is Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema. It is a collection of film reviews published over the past few years on movies, many that we’re already familiar with, which give a specific Right-leaning impression. (more…)
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Although I was born at a time when Westerns were a central fixture of American pop culture, I never paid them much attention until much later in life when I chanced upon a repeat playing of director John Ford’s epic 1939 film Stagecoach on late-night TV. (more…)
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See also: John Wayne
Oh, Almighty God, centuries ago thou raised a magnificent Mission, a harbor for all of peace and freedom. This was the Alamo. Today we ask thy blessing, thy help, and thy protection as once again history is re-lived in this production. We ask that this film, The Alamo, be the World’s most outstanding production. We ask this in the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns world without end. Amen. — Invocation recited on the first day of The Alamo’s production (more…)
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I have a rule about films: I don’t watch any made after 2008, which I consider to be the last year in which good films were made. Sometimes, however, my rule can be wrong and I’ll make an exception. I’m pleased to report that my rule was wrong about The Banshees of Inisherin, a 2022 Irish film starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson and directed by Martin McDonagh.
Colin Farrell portrays Pádraic Súilleabháin, a farmer living on the fictional island of Inisherin, off Ireland’s western coast, in the 1920s, during the waning months of the Irish Civil War. (more…)
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Equilibrium is a 2002 science fiction film that was poorly received and underviewed, largely seen as an also-ran to 1999’s The Matrix, which set the tone and style of cyberpunk thrillers to follow. Equilibrium is unjustly forgotten, a sleeper non-hit that deserves revisiting; a thoughtful and condensed statement on huge volumes of preceding dystopian literature and cinema.
Equilibrium plays to the strength of film as a medium in its ability to succinctly put salient points into character narratives that otherwise require full-length novels and academic treatises. (more…)
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Joanna Rakoff is a writer, and My Salinger Year is Philippe Falardeau’s film of her memoir about 1995, when she is on a visit to New York from Berkeley, fresh from university. The visit becomes permanent, however, because Joanna is a writer; she’s determined to make it, especially to get published in The New Yorker. Joanna, played by Margaret Qualley, is determined, a bit shy, and has a slurred, squeaky voice that hints English major. God knows, I heard enough of them. (more…)
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Three years ago I did a semi-humorous, shaggy-dog piece about Pinocchio and the Fascisti (“Pinocchio: The Face of Fascism“). Its jumping-off point was talking about several Pinocchio films in the works, particularly a long-awaited stop-motion animation feature directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson. (more…)
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In Darren Aronofsky’s new film The Whale, Moby Dick gets referenced a lot, but its subject isn’t an actual whale. Charlie (Brendan Fraser), the protagonist, is rather a monstrous human leviathan whose massiveness can easily disgust others, much like the monstrously-deformed John Merrick, who was depicted in David Lynch’s 1980 film The Elephant Man. Merrick had to live masked and wrapped in canvas so as not to shock people. (more…)
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I am reviewing two films together because they don’t merit stand-alone reviews, but I want to say something about them anyway. It is just a coincidence that they both star Brad Pitt.
First, the good news. If you like Guy Ritchie’s comic crime capers like Snatch or Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels or The Gentlemen, you will love David Leitch’s Bullet Train.
Guy Ritchie basically took Quentin Tarantino’s formula of eccentric, wise-cracking criminals, non-linear narratives, and blood and guts, then purged it of all auteur pretensions. (more…)
Jean Raoux, Pygmalion Adoring His Statue, 1717
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Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971) are both concerned with love and the ideal. If you love cinema, you will love these films, which I would rank among the greatest ever made. They can teach us a lot about love, idealism, art, and different sorts of desire. Be advised that there are a great many spoilers ahead.
Vertigo is the story of John “Scottie” Ferguson (played by James Stewart), a San Francisco policeman who retires from the force after a deadly rooftop chase leaves him with severe acrophobia (fear of heights). (more…)