In Michael Mann's Heat, both Neil (De Niro) and Vincent (Pacino) are dedicated to their respective work, their respective codes. And for both, this extreme dedication will cost them everything they’re fighting for.
PositionStaff Writer
JoinedMay 28, 2017
Articles49
Sarah Welch-Larson is a film critic interested in feminist theory and theology, sad men in space, and stories about androids. She lives in Chicago with her husband, their dog, and about three dozen houseplants.
The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and The Insider (1999) bookend the history of the United States from Michael Mann’s perspective. Though their circumstances are worlds apart, their stories expose the history of America.
We tell ourselves we’re individuals, beholden to no one, even as we’re shaped by our circumstances. We think of ourselves as the main character. We print the legend. Both Josey Wales and Keoma embody that sense of individualism—and, intentionally or not, their respective movies bear the weight of the contradiction at the heart of being an American.
So many of the movies I saw at this year's True/False Film Festival were concerned with human perceptions of time, memory, and legacy. In a world where reality is warped by fascism and generative AI, telling imaginatively true stories about real people seems especially important.
Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag is a study of the notion of trust—who gives it, who earns it, and how it can be assured in a world where everyone is always lying to each other.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and Conclave depict faith at work in a world that’s dark and growing darker. Both films hold faith up to the light and ask: In times like these, what are the faithful to do?
Both Road House (1989) and Magic Mike (2012) are about learning how to be a person in society. It’s possible to pick some of it up in passing, but it’s much easier to learn when there’s a teacher involved.
Both Eephus and Everybody Wants Some!!! explore groups of men who are devoted to baseball, but have yet to figure out the rest of their own lives.
Babette’s Feast (1987) and First Cow (2019) anchor themselves in locations dotted with small cooking fires, smoke rising in the cold. Both movies dream of human life as more than simple subsistence; both present simple stories in which the act of preparing a good meal threatens to tear a community apart.
Three years into attending the True/False Film Festival and I finally feel as though I’m getting my sea legs. It feels good to consider a problem I’ve never come across before, to encounter the world through another’s eyes. I go to the movies to see something I’d otherwise never get to see, and True/False offers a unique distillation of that ethos.
The monsters are real, powerful, capable of exerting their wills on the world. Both Nosferatu and The Vourdalak abandon any pretense at knowing how this evil came to be; what’s scarier is that it exists already, that it’s caught the protagonists flat-footed, and that it’s potent.
If Godard’s Alphaville had been heavy-handed in 1965, its dystopian future, ruled over by a genocidal computer, feels oppressive and inescapable now.