Frederick Wiseman's films often have the texture of old memories—the ones that resurface, only partially recognizable, in dreams.
It’s human nature to want answers. It’s also human nature for those desired answers to tell us something about ourselves.
An extravagant defense of a legend’s later work
It’s always winter in Warren Beatty's Reds, and someone is always thinking about the future. It’s always winter, and someone is always fighting, someone is always hoping, someone is always gritting their teeth and doing the work.
It’s a strange time to be writing about the winter season and burgeoning young democracy depicted in the likes of anti-Westerns McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Hateful Eight, and Ravenous. But these bleak, subversive winter Westerns—where black humor is always holstered and ready—recognize the malignancy of the American settler/colonial project.
Instead of being a love letter to films of old, The Holiday is almost an elegy for a world Meyers knows is about to die.
The Mothman Prophecies illustrates anxiety’s steady build of dread. The deeper John tunnels into his investigation, the more he becomes convinced that some terrible event is fast approaching. He becomes consumed by the dream of knowing what will happen before it happens, the idea that if you simply knew the collision was coming, you could be the one to set the train on a different course.