Roxana Hadadi, Author at Bright Wall/Dark Room

The layering of theme and intention and spectacle is what makes Ryan Coogler's Sinners so rich, so dense, and so sneakily straightforward; like all great horror, Sinners is operating on levels that go as deep inside its characters as the blood and gore it splatters onscreen.

“What’s Life About Anyway?”

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 141: Jonathan Demme

In Jonathan Demme’s 2004 adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, the truth is a nightmare.

Edward Norton sits on a bench with his snarling dog in an illustration of a scene from Spike Lee's 25th Hour by artist Marc Aspinall

It’s Over After Tonight

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 134: Spike Lee

Spike Lee's 25th Hour is a movie about unwanted change, about forced adaptation, about how our choices have consequences we can’t understand and can’t foresee, about how our identities are impossible-to-parse combinations of nature and nurture and nationalism, about how the myth of the American dream is persistent and prolonged and relies on our performance of it.

The Namesake (2006) | Fox Searchlight Pictures

We All Came Out of Gogol’s Overcoat

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 83: Secrets and Confessions

On the uneasy duality of Identity in Mira Nair's The Namesake.

‘None of Us Will See Heaven’

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 76: Second Acts

The weight of family and the sacrifice for a better life in Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition.

Brandon Lee in 'The Crow' | art by Tony Stella

A Painted Face and a Shadow’s Smile

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 74: Long Nights

On the journey to hell and back in The Crow.

The American Dream is to Disappear: Loneliness and Los Angeles in Somewhere

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 73: Los Angeles

The exclusivity of that Los Angeles phenomenon—and the loneliness inherent within it—is the focus of writer-director Sofia Coppola’s only male-centered film, Somewhere.

Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' | artwork by Brianna Ashby

Kiss Me or Kill Me: Sexual Desperation and Identity Erasure in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 72: Thirst Traps

In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a carnal energy roils and simmers in the air, like the thunderstorms rolling in over the plantation, drenching everyone to the bone.

Paradise Now (2005) | Warner Independent Pictures

‘The Occupation Defines the Resistance’: The Devastating Nature of Resilience in Paradise Now

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 71: Resilience

Paradise Now provides humanity to the oppressed, even as years of continued violence chip away at their personhood, providing a defense of the disenfranchised and a portrait of damaged resilience that still remains incomparable nearly fifteen years later.

‘Do We Film or Not?’ Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees and Smashing the Fourth Wall

Roxana Hadadi·

Issue 69: 1994

Through the Olive Trees is about the melding of two guiding principles: the aching yearn we all have for human companionship, and the knowledge gained by peeking behind the cinematic curtain and seeing ourselves.