David Fincher's The Game is a modern-day parable: an existential dread-induced morality play meticulously designed to drag a cold-hearted, Scrooge-ish fat cat down to the Twilight Zone-y pits of comeuppance.
The interplay between evidence and absence is a powerful, often invisible force in Satyajit Ray’s deceptively simple Days and Nights In the Forest (1970). The film’s ostensible small-scale neorealist drama contains a whole internal cosmology of four middle-aged men in crisis, where the black holes of negative space exert the same gravitational power as the stars themselves.
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.
Once upon a time they did make movies about us, and they starred Diane Lane. In 2002, at age 36, she played Connie in Unfaithful, and in 2003, at 37, she played Frances in Under the Tuscan Sun. Movies—and characters—that, until recent rewatches, I never saw as the siblings they are: Two married women whose lives come to a head, and the different paths they take toward discovery. One is about ripping it all apart, the other about building it all back up.
If John Frankenheimer's Seconds came out today, with its horror lens firmly trained on themes of extreme plastic surgery, dread of aging, and get-happy-quick schemes, it would likely have found a ready A24 audience and a series of Oscar nods. But in 1966, audiences hated it.
This month, Chad and Elizabeth sit down with author Karina Wolf to discuss midlife crisis and Thomas Vinterberg's 2020 film, Another Round.
Why does Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) choose to spend his vacation at home? It’s the great secret at the master bedroom closet-heart of The ’Burbs. I’d wager it’s the riddle at the heart of the American suburbs, too.