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“Pretty Good:” On Patriot and Spies as Falling Stars

Over its two seasons, Patriot traces that meteoric descent with a humanist’s touch, turning international espionage into quotidian drama and grounding the global politics of nuclear armament in the mundane specifics of industrial piping workplaces and father-son dynamics.

Issue 125: Chicago

November 2023

“I’m Gonna Shout Action—When I Do, Just Be in Love”: An interview with Stephen Cone

Frank Falisi·

Interviews Issue 125: Chicago

"I think this is a thing that will not change in whatever I’m lucky enough to make in the future: a constant prioritizing of the pleasure principle. In some ways, it’s why I’m not the primary audience for contemporary American independent film. There’s a sort of gritty American naturalism that lacks an engagement with desire. I lament the moving away from sensual pleasures in cinema."

Art depicting the main characters from FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF.

A Fruitful Life

Arjun Byju·

Issue 125: Chicago

There’s a genuine sadness hiding in the escapades and exuberance of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, an awareness that this, like everything else, will all come to an end.

Nicolas Cage as Dave Spritz stands in an illuminated elevator, luggage in hand. The Chicago skyline is visible in the background.

Cold Front

Peter Raffel·

Issue 125: Chicago

This is the Chicago that The Weather Man knows: a city trapped between coasts, haunted by its reputation, growing all the more faceless as it edges its way through the new millennium.

Jack Black and John Cusack in High Fidelity artwork

Baby Got Going: Longing and Leaving in High Fidelity

Erin Langner·

Issue 125: Chicago

“What came first, the music or the misery?” Watching High Fidelity now, twenty-odd years later, the question shifted: which came first, my own vision for my future self or the film's vision?

While You Were Sleeping As a Balm for Homesickness

Hope Rehak·

Issue 125: Chicago

While You Were Sleeping (1995) is a great romantic comedy, but it's also a love letter to Chicago in the winter.

John Dillinger Keeps Dying At Chicago’s Biograph Theater

Bryan Miller·

Issue 125: Chicago

Whether or not he haunts the theater at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago is up for debate, but what’s certain is that John Dillinger has haunted 90 years of American cinema.

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Issue 124: Westerns

October 2023

For Two Songs in a Row: Some Notes on the Profundity of Rio Bravo

Ethan Warren·

Issue 124: Westerns

Like so many good Westerns, Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo feels like a novel I want to forever have a bookmark in: ready to pick up and enjoy, with a few passages left for next time.

Towards the Afropastoral: What Nope Says About the Black Western

Celia Mattison·

Issue 124: Westerns

Jordan Peele's Nope refashions the Western as a genre that tells a story of American erasure by its survivors. Peele pays tribute to the forgotten subject of Eadweard Muybridge’s iconic print by reimagining a bespoke legacy: the rider receives not only a name and a backstory—he also gets a future.

Episode #34: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Veronica Fitzpatrick & Chad Perman·

Issue 124: Westerns Podcast

This month, author and Cinephile: A Card Game creator Cory Everett joins us to talk about Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). We get into the elasticity of the Western, what constitutes pure cinéma, Claudia Cardinale thirst, Big Screen Movies and the garages that screen them, Leone the minimalist and maximalist, and more.

What’s Wrong with a Cowboy in Hamburg? In Search of an American Friend

Benjamin Page·

Issue 124: Westerns

Wim Wenders's The American Friend isn’t a Western in the strictest sense, but the obsession of its central antagonist with “the cowboy,” that myth of masculine exceptionalism, is both an attempt to claw his way out of loneliness, and a core reason for why he remains, in fact, so achingly alone.

Hollywood’s Last Cowboy

Matthew Germenis·

Issue 124: Westerns

What do Calvin Candie, Hugh Glass, and Rick Dalton tell us about Leonardo DiCaprio as an artist—and what do these characters tell us about American history and its myths?

A Hatred That IS, A World That IS

Andrew Rostan·

Issue 124: Westerns

I think of sunlight when I think of Westerns. What strikes me about The Furies (1950) is that it’s shrouded in darkness.

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