Love Letters and Angry Rants of a Devoted Cinephile
What is memory? Why does it fade? What does it mean to us here in the present? These deep questions probe Hiroshima Mon Amour, a film whose storyline takes place over 24 hours, but in fact encapsulates two entire lifetimes. Two lovers lie in bed: a Japanese man (Eiji Okada) and a French woman (Emmanuelle... Continue Reading →
The shark never seemed to work. Shooting went way over schedule and budget. Robert Shaw was drunk. Nothing seemed to work during the production of Jaws, the first real big movie production of director Steven Spielberg. But somehow, through hard work or dumb luck, a classic was made, one that birthed the modern day summer... Continue Reading →
"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone!" Show creator Rod Serling uttered a... Continue Reading →
John Hughes' Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) tells the story of Neal Page (Steve Martin) and his crazy ride home with bumbling shower curtain ring salesman Del Griffith (John Candy). Long revered as a script that John Hughes wrote in just a week, the film has stood the test of time as not only a... Continue Reading →
When did film become art? From Edison's early experiments to unique Nickelodeons, the inception of film was innovative at presenting moving pictures as a parlor trick. It would take precise camera angles and a dynamic story to prove that cinema could be something more. And that first film may have been Carl Theodore Dreyer's 1928... Continue Reading →
Who killed Laura Palmer? That's the question that begins Twin Peaks, but it quickly spirals into so much more. In a town overrun with strange characters and a mysterious evil force, Twin Peaks builds itself into a strange, brilliant examination of... well, the answer isn't quite clear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7d0Lm_31BE When Homecoming Queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee)... Continue Reading →
The premise of The Wire seems simple enough; it's a police drama that follows the drug trade in Baltimore. The cops target their suspects through cellphone wiretaps. They fight against a bureaucracy and try to make their neighborhood a better place. But that is only the most literal wire: the show is really about the... Continue Reading →
The world is a crazy place at the moment. Between COVID-19, the police murders of innocent African-Americans and rampant protests met with militarized resistance, I often find solace in films. Not as an escape, but as a reflection, and perhaps no film reflects our times more than Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. It's a... Continue Reading →
Great TV shows are born from great characters. The Sopranos has Tony Soprano. I Love Lucy has, well, Lucy. Breaking Bad has Walter and Jesse and Saul and Gus and the list just keeps going and going. Combined with an innovative cinematic technique and timeless themes, Breaking Bad emerges as one of the best, if... Continue Reading →
Before Deadpool made it cool, Jean-Luc Godard was breaking the fourth wall with ease in his 1960 classic, Breathless, a film that broke the rules because it could, mocked the conventions of genre and established an entirely new way of looking at film. The plot of the film is seemingly familiar enough; a young, tough... Continue Reading →
Hardwired for Film 