A majority of the movies that get made are horror movies for two main reasons: 1) With some imagination and a solid team you can make one on a very limited budget and 2) There’s such a large built-in fanbase starving for new horror that even hot garbage usually makes a little money. They’re the safest […]
Film
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No Matter Where You Go
Saoirse Ronan stuns in “The Outrun”
I think most of us know the feeling of either loving an alcoholic or being one. I’ve been in a relationship with someone struggling with alcoholism and will never forget the gut-churning fear of watching the person that put fire to my blood, subtly shift into an unrecognizable other that made being in public a nerve-wracking […]
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The Joke’s On Us
"Joker: Folie à Deux" is a half-formed idea in search of a movie
Look, from the jump I’m going to say that “Joker: Folie à Deux” is both a little better than most people say, while somehow being worse in a lot of ways I wasn’t prepared for. But, and this might be a hot take, so I guess you can take my opinion with a bucket of […]
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The Bend Film Festival Primer
How to build a schedule, one movie at a time
The hardest thing about attending a film festival is building the schedule. It’s a terrible feeling spending all that time and money to catch a bunch of films across three or four days of a fest and then find out that you missed all the ones garnering the most buzz. FOMO hits hard when everyone […]
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A World-Class Weekend
The 21st annual Bend Film Festival is almost here
Here we go, ladies, gentlemen and everyone across the spectrum! On Oct. 10 the 21st Annual Bend Film Festival arrives, and I’ve seen an astonishing number of movies, not just in my duties as Lead Shorts Programmer for the fest, but in preparation to recommend some non-shorts related cinema to all of you. From the […]
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The Gorgeous and the Grotesque
"The Substance" provides a singular cinematic experience
I‘m going to lead with this so no one gets mad at me later: of the thousands of you who read this article, maybe 20 will like this movie. This is one of those films critics fawn all over, saying that it’s an audacious and strikingly original piece of work of the kind that comes […]
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Sing, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Sing
Art and nostalgia continue the duel
My dream format for writing about movies would be to write about one big and one little movie every week. That way I can be a part of the conversation connected to the newest blockbuster everyone is watching while also trying to bring attention to a smaller movie that deserves more eyeballs aimed at it. […]
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The Next Wave Arrives
Rebel Ridge, Jeremy Saulnier and the new guard
Last week I wrote about the New Hollywood movement of auteur filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s, and it got me thinking. I spent 1,000 words talking about how seminal this period of cinema was, and I realized that I was lamenting missing out on living through that era and what it would have been […]
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The Auteur Era
Having a conversation about the American New Wave
For cinephiles like me, it’s hard to really overhype the importance of the American New Wave (AKA New Hollywood) era of movies that lasted from the mid-1960s to the early ’80s. It was not only important in how, for a very limited amount of time, the era transferred the authorial role of filmmaking from the […]
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May the Source Be With You: August Edition
A24, reality television and the search for happiness
Whelp, I used a blanket for the first time in months this weekend, so that must mean fall is around the corner and the summer that seemed like it lasted two weeks is almost over. That’s OK for me since it doesn’t change my routines too much (until winter and my Seasonal Affective Disorder rears […]