They say the future of film is female. It is. But so is the past. Maybe that’s not evident upon first glance—certainly not if you page through the standard history books—because critics, historians, and filmmakers, mostly male, like to focus … Continue reading Ida Lupino: Filmmaker Collection
Words, for better or worse, shape our perception of the world. Some, like death and decay, carry negative connotations. Hearing them conjures images of mortality, finality, even obsolescence. Others, like birth and growth, invoke positivity: Tiny baby hands grasping adult … Continue reading THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM
His name might not be as synonymous with the development of cinematic grammar as Alice Guy-Blaché, Orson Welles, or Jean-Luc Godard, but experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage’s ripples are still felt in contemporary cinema. From The Act of Seeing With One’s … Continue reading BRAKHAGE
“I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.” —Notes From the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky Who makes the monster, and where do they come from? We’ve been asking those questions for far too long … Continue reading JOKER
Judy Garland was born in a trunk. Or so the story goes in A Star Is Born, a movie about an aging actor on his way out, thanks to addiction, and the young starlet he handpicks to bear the burden of … Continue reading JUDY
Somewhere in a remote part of Japan, a film crew is shooting a low-budget zombie movie in an abandoned World War II facility. The two leads are teen heartthrobs, and the director is of the megalomaniac variety. He can’t get … Continue reading ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (カメラを止めるな!)
One of my favorite TCM discoveries of 2018 was a 10-minute short Warner Bros. and Vitaphone production: So You Want to Be a Detective. Starring George O’Hanlon (who would go on to voice George Jetson), and created by Richard L. … Continue reading (So You Want) Joe McDoakes Comedies…
Ad Astra, from filmmaker par excellence James Gray, opens with a shot of the cosmos, vast and terrifying. As the camera pans across the twinkling dots of a thousand suns, a lens flare catches the frame and briefly illuminates the … Continue reading AD ASTRA
For Paul Stamets, it begins and ends with mushrooms. From death, they create life. From fractures, they create connections. And from sickness, they create health. “Mushrooms represent rebirth. Rejuvenation. Regeneration,” Stamets says. Fantastic Fungi, directed by Louie Schwartzberg and edited by … Continue reading FANTASTIC FUNGI
Michael J. Cinema 
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