“‘Rebecca’ Quickly Subsides into the Dullest Parts of Its Source Material”

You come for the king, you best not make a half-assed Netflix movie. Continue reading →

“Best of Criterion’s New Releases, January 2019”

Elaine May, Alfred Hitchcock, Abbas “We Miss You” Kiarostami, and Norman Jewison’s unexpected tonic for “Green Book” make up the DNA of this month’s Criterion round-up. Continue reading →

“The 50 Best Slasher Movies of All Time”

It’s been so long since I put together my big blurb contribution for Paste Magazine‘s list of the 50 best slasher movies of all time (of all time!) that I actually…forgot we hadn’t yet published it. But we hadn’t! And now we have! I wrote about Tenebrae, the Dario Argento meta classic, and you’ll also see re-ups … Continue reading →

Review: Phantom Thread, 2017, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

I put down a thousand plus words about the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Phantom Thread, in my review for The Playlist; I put down a couple hundred more in a “best of the year” blurb I put together for the same site; I will be putting down even more hundreds of words for a piece I’m … Continue reading →

Best of Criterion’s New Releases, September 2017

Good news! I’m still here. I’m suffering a writer’s drought, but I’m still here. And here’s our first break in the drought: Paste Magazine’s monthly Criterion Collection round-up, this time for September (because that’s how months work). As with most Criterion months, September ’17 is pretty good, I think; I can’t speak for a couple … Continue reading →

The 100 Best Movies of the 1950s

Next up in Paste Magazine’s “100 Best/Greatest” series: The 1950s! I blurbed my ass off for this list, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat (which is to say that I am literally doing it again right now, for a different list focused on a different subject. As Hexxus once said: No breaks!). Anywho … Continue reading →

Review: Private Property, 1960, dir. Leslie Stevens

To know the work of Warren Oates is to love Warren Oates. Odds are you probably do know Oates’ work, too, even if you don’t realize it. Oates nailed down roughly 50 roles over the course of his too-short career, which spanned from 1959 to 1982; he kept busy, putting a particular emphasis on Westerns … Continue reading →

Review: Hitchcock, 2012, dir. Sacha Gervasi

Watching Hitchcock you may find yourself wondering, often, what Alfred Hitchcock himself would think of Sacha Gervasi’s efforts to celebrate his life and contributions to cinema. If Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of the man tells us anything about him, his likeliest reaction might well be a cutting remark spoken while gazing down his nose at Gervasi’s film. Hitchcock commemorates the man’s … Continue reading →

My Cinematic Alphabet

I don’t typically participate in blog memes, mostly because deadlines aren’t really my thing– this is a leisurely blog, updated when I deign fit to update it, after all, and I have so many other things to do with my time that setting dates for myself generally doesn’t work out. But some memes are just … Continue reading →