On this week’s edition of After Image, I chat with Metro Arts producer Veronica Straight-Lingo about my top 10 movies of 2024. Continue reading
Category: Essays
Essays and reflections on movies, their impact and influence, and the people who created them.
2024: The End Has No End
The call came around 8:30, Friday morning. As these things do, it came without presage or pageantry. A friend had died. It happened while he was on a typical bike ride—nothing nefarious, nothing significant, just a simple fall, and that … Continue reading 2024: The End Has No End
PURSUED
It’s often been joked that if the title wasn’t already taken, most of Robert Mitchum’s movies could’ve been titled Out of the Past. That 1947 drama has become emblematic of the noir cycle popular in the 1940s and early-50s thanks … Continue reading PURSUED
THE DEAD DON’T HURT
The young girl has a vision. A knight in shining armor riding a horse in a forest approaches. But the vision ends there. “I never wanted to be rescued,” the woman says much later in life. She is Vivienne Le … Continue reading THE DEAD DON’T HURT
Here Comes Cinema: 2024 Fall Movie Preview
Maybe you were underwhelmed by the summer blockbuster season. A lot of them did feel somewhat unfinished and underdeveloped, didn’t they? Perhaps you felt the spring release slate was a little light, and the winter award season was a tad … Continue reading Here Comes Cinema: 2024 Fall Movie Preview
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
The magnificent stranger rides in from nowhere and with no destination. He sports brown boots, shrunk-to-fit dark jeans, and a forest green serape with a white pattern. He’ll give the name “Joe” when asked, but names don’t really mean much … Continue reading A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES (UNE CORDE, UN COLT)
The best Italian westerns revolve around revenge. And, as the old Confucian saying goes, “He who seeks revenge digs two graves.” Robert Hossein’s Cemetery Without Crosses (Une corde, un colt) is a revenge tale so sparse the characters needn’t speak … Continue reading CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES (UNE CORDE, UN COLT)
Coming Attraction? Unpacking Boulder’s bid for the Sundance Film Festival
In case you somehow haven’t heard, the Sundance Film Festival might be coming to Boulder in 2027. “The Sundance Film Festival has a deep history in the Mountain West, and we can think of no better home for its next … Continue reading Coming Attraction? Unpacking Boulder’s bid for the Sundance Film Festival
THE GUN HAWK
An old-timer wanders into the saloon and starts asking for a drink. The patrons turn him down. He’s been here before, and they’re tired of his fumbling, bumbling presence. The young gunslinger at the bar orders a drink. “You already … Continue reading THE GUN HAWK
Michael J. Cinema 
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