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Episode #21: Aftersun (2022)

Bright Wall/Dark Room·
Issue 115: Best of 2022Podcast
For our annual fashionably late “Best Of” issue, we’re looking at a 2022 highlight: Charlotte Wells’s staggering debut feature Aftersun, with film critic, author, and educator Adam Nayman.
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Trending

The Christiean Architecture of Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion

Justin Hairston·
Issue 115: Best of 2022

Episode #21: Aftersun (2022)

Bright Wall/Dark Room·
Issue 115: Best of 2022Podcast

Memoria and the Limitations of Ebert’s Empathy Machine

Celia Mattison·
Issue 115: Best of 2022

Issue 115: Best of 2022

January 2023

The Christiean Architecture of Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion

Justin Hairston·
Issue 115: Best of 2022
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, takes the classic structures of a Christie caper and levels them up, building an impossibly polyhedral monument to all that a mystery can be.
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Memoria and the Limitations of Ebert’s Empathy Machine

Celia Mattison·
Issue 115: Best of 2022
Writing about Memoria ignites the very challenge Jessica faces: how do I translate my thoughts to another person who cannot hold them, and why am I so determined to do so?
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The Blessing

Fran Hoepfner·
Issue 115: Best of 2022
Terence Davies' Benediction is not a puzzle, nor does it court confusion. Instead, it explains how Siegfried Sassoon’s life, whether he wants it or not, is a blessing.
Read More

We Can Be Heroes

Calvin McMillin·
Issue 115: Best of 2022
We know the songs and the big story beats, but Baz Luhrmann shows us that with Elvis, there's still more to discover; not facts, really, but feelings.
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A Few Ways of Looking at The Fabelmans

Frank Falisi·
Issue 115: Best of 2022
The Fabelmans is not a coming-of-age story. There is no answer. It isn’t a parable or lesson or meditation. Instead it reflects, renders in real time, its creator’s relationship to his memories.
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The World of Love Wants No Monsters in It

Olivia Rutigliano·
Issue 115: Best of 2022
Luca Guadagnino's Bones and All is a film that is full of flesh, but also anti-flesh: ethereality and ephemerality.
Read More

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Issue 114: Romantic Comedies

December 2022

What Color Are Their Hands Now?

Mark Dzula·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies
The Great Muppet Caper is ultimately a metatextual love poem to the magic of moviemaking and its raw, beating heart rests in a tenuous love triangle between Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Charles Grodin.
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How Do I Love Thee?

Macy Todd·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies
On the rom-com genre's obsession with numbers, love as algebra, and What's Your Number (2011)
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Episode #20: Vanilla Sky (2001)

Bright Wall/Dark Room·
Issue 114: Romantic ComediesPodcast
December means one thing: Happy Cruisemas, from our home to yours. This month we welcome back special Cruise correspondent Elizabeth Cantwell to discuss Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky. Surrealist rom com or indulgent puzzle film? Flop or parable?
Read More

Three Square Meals a Day

Fran Hoepfner·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies
In weaker, lesser, dumber hands, Design for Living is a movie about three horny morons; in Lubitsch’s, all three characters spark and sparkle, an abundance of wit powering them through reckless indecisions.
Read More

Meet-Cute at the Morgue

Calvin McMillin·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies
Park Chan-wook’s new film may come to us in the guise of a detective story, a police procedural, even a quasi-erotic thriller. But at its heart, Decision to Leave is really a romantic comedy. 
Read More

But by God, There’ll Be Dancing: My Best Friend’s Wedding

Catherine Ellsberg·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies
My Best Friend’s Wedding takes an archetype and strays, all while revving up our expectations. It’s enough to make us wonder what film universe we’ve stepped into: is this even a romantic comedy, or have we wandered into a Greek tragedy?
Read More

Extras

New Releases, Interviews, Festivals and More

Christmas in Nevada

Claire Rudy Foster·
Extras

The Hours’s Queer Chronologies

Robert Stinner·
Extras

The Lifespan of a Film

B.C. Wallin·
Extras

Episode #18: The 60th New York Film Festival

Bright Wall/Dark Room·
ExtrasPodcast

Featured Essays

from the archives 2013 - 2022

Sorcerer (1977) | art by Tony Stella

No Way To Managua: Bridging the Forces of Fate and Identity in William Friedkin’s Sorcerer

Travis Woods·
Issue 71: Resilience

Roll, Jordan, Roll

Matt Brennan·
Issue 10: History
Alec Baldwin in Miami Blues | art by Tony Stella

Let’s Go Straight to the Happily Ever After Part

Travis Woods·
Issue 61: Heat

Something True and Right and Dramatic: Boogie Nights as Religious Experience

Britton Andrews·
Issue 60: That's Entertainment!

There’s More to This World Than You Have Seen

Ethan Warren·
Issue 59: Second Time Around

Episode #20: Vanilla Sky (2001)

Bright Wall/Dark Room·
Issue 114: Romantic ComediesPodcast

In Remembrance of the Black Romantic Comedy

Sharena Sigmon·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies

Three Square Meals a Day

Fran Hoepfner·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies

Caprices

Ramya Yandava·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies

But by God, There’ll Be Dancing: My Best Friend’s Wedding

Catherine Ellsberg·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies

Episode #19: Pain and Glory (2019)

Bright Wall/Dark Room·
Issue 113: RecoveryPodcast

Christmas in Nevada

Claire Rudy Foster·
Extras

Meet-Cute at the Morgue

Calvin McMillin·
Issue 114: Romantic Comedies

The Hours’s Queer Chronologies

Robert Stinner·
Extras

I Live In A World I Didn’t Make

Travis Woods·
Issue 113: Recovery

A Miracle’s Underside

Julia Mueller·
Issue 113: Recovery

The Strange Horror of Failure

Ross Showalter·
Issue 113: Recovery
1 2 3 … 112

Twitter

  • "THE FABELMANS has a kind of artificial intelligence, its episodic structure a series of automatic recalibrations.… twitter.com/i/web/status/16197…

    January 29, 2023 8:37 pm

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