Critical condition: what should be the relationship between critic and community?
What's the role of the critic in our common pursuit of meaning through culture, and community through taste?
M
Ruairí McCann
Martin Eden: a song of experience cut on the lathe of history
Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden fuses avant-garde methods with classical filmmaking form for a radical, accessible high drama.
L
Tom Nel
Locke and analogues of development
Urbanism and psychology collide in a tale of tumultuous personal progress.
A
Edward Weech
A Quiet Place: a heart to love, and courage to make it known
Against a backdrop of civilisational collapse, John Krasinski's passion project reflects upon the permanent things underlying our shared lives.
T
Ruairí McCann
The people’s art: Wakaliwood and the action movie as a democratised working-class expression
Crazy World, the newest film from Uganda’s Wakaliwood studio, entrenches them as one of the most exciting loci of contemporary cinema.
B
Katy D'Avella
Beyond the gaze: the radical desire of Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma's film blends art and ecstasy and reaches towards utopia.
T
David G. Hughes
The anxiety of influence and The Assassination of Jesse James, analogous to our cultural moment
A western that speaks to a culture war torn between the charismatic, problematic past and the ambitious, revisionist present.
F
Savina Petkova
Fairy-tale feminism: recalling female agency in The Swan Princess
Sabotaged and overshadowed by a resurgent Disney Animation, this forgotten fairy-tale empowered at least one person.
W
Bobby Vogel
What I hate, that I do: thoughts on Wobble Palace
Technology and inner life collide—and unite—in Eugene Kotlyarenko's Wobble Palace.
A
Patrick Preziosi
Ageing at the movies: The Irishman, Welcome to Marwen, and The Mule
Do the Old Guard of American filmmakers have anything left to say? More than most, it turns out.
T
Bobby Vogel
The eclipse of a face: on Zoey Dutch and Before I Fall
Faces tell us what we need to know in Ry Russo-Young's Before I Fall.
L
Edward Weech
Light versus dark: truth and transcendence in True Detective
There's hidden psychology, theology, and philosophy in this unique Southern Gothic serial.
A
David G. Hughes
A touch of zen and violence: on the playful fantasy of Cliff Booth
As moral panic around fantasy violence flares up, Quentin Tarantino argues for a philosophy of cathartic, ethical screen violence via the charisma of Brad Pitt.
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George Turner
“Thy shall bear witness!”: a case for the continued admiration of silent cinema
In a time of overwhelming and oppressive "realism" on screen, it's worth looking back at the creative virtues of silent cinema.
C
David G. Hughes
Cynical cinema criticism, a new puritanism: a polemic on where we are
Cinema has maintained a liberating anti-Puritan ethos since its conception, but how long can that last in today's febrile film culture?
A
Benjamin Brown
Archives of pain: Shoah, a retrospective reappraisal
A close look at Claude Lanzmann's harrowing and seminal nine-hour Holocaust documentary.
T
Edward Weech
The rocky road to meaning: the enduring philosophy of a Hollywood icon
Why does Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa occupy such a treasured spot in the public imagination?
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Ruairí McCann
“Dead, I’ll suffer less”: Dead Souls and the documentation of decay
A close look at Wang Bing's epic eight-hour delve into the survivors of Mao's "re-education" camps.
