Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise is decadence splashed on celluloid, a celebration of the shine of glam rock, and a preemptive funeral for the scene officiated by the dark underside of the business.
PositionStaff Writer
JoinedMay 28, 2017
Articles25
Sarah Welch-Larson writes about feminist theology, sad men in space, and stories about creation and agency. She is a member of Chicago Indie Critics, the cohost of Seeing and Believing podcast, and the author of Becoming Alien: The Beginning and End of Evil in Science Fiction's Most Idiosyncratic Franchise, now available from Cascade Books. She lives in Chicago with her husband, their dog, and about three dozen houseplants.
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is a self-fulfilling prophecy that undoes itself in the telling, an ouroboros regurgitating its own tail rather than eating it.
Frankenstein rests in the meeting place where the borders between transgression and transcendence touch.
Stop Making Sense is a beautiful magic trick: show the stage for the hard concrete reality it is, then transform it into an island of motion and movement that’s unreal and exaggerated.
The Empire Strikes Back is about doing the work after all passion for that work is gone, about the slow, hard attempts to see a long-term plan through with no hope of success in sight.
The tension Michael Mann’s Collateral sustains is effective because the movie understands the unequal relationship between employer and employee, between driver and passenger.
In this single shot, The Hunt for Red October presents its stakes: the struggle between an individual and the vast and powerful forces that threaten to swallow him.
Alien: Resurrection swings the pendulum away from the dour grimness of its predecessor towards a sense of humor and ironic self-awareness; the result is an Alien eager to thumb its nose at its precursors. It doesn’t care if anyone who loves those earlier films gets caught in the crossfire, either.
Anxiety is Fury Road’s strongest throughline: the beating heart at its center.
It is the first day of summer 1962 in Paris, and it is a beautiful day, and for Cléo, everything is falling apart.
Tron: Legacy's lasting reputation is mostly that of a flashy action blockbuster, with plenty to show and little to say. But the film's unique visual aesthetic elevates it a level beyond similar films of its kind.
Only Lovers Left Alive is about marriage, and about weathering long dark nights of the soul just long enough to see the light again, taking each wave as it comes and then bracing for the next one.
