Moving between the universal and the specific, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life builds an ethereal, impressionistic sense of time that ebbs and flows like a memory or a dream.
October marks the 100th issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room, and we're observing that milestone by talking our way through a longtime staff favorite, the revisionist rom-com Sleeping With Other People.
Our son watches more television than we’d planned; one of the many side effects of living in pandemic times. Coming from a media background in criticism and textual analysis, children’s entertainment drove me insane, but one day, something cracked open.
There are worse ways to ride out the pandemic than mainlining some three dozen or so movies in a week, finding delights where you least expect them.
This is the story of Gawain: crashing through in-progress myths that don’t belong to him, brushing against gods. This is the story of Gawain, stumbling through the forest, his soul bared, searching: For himself, sure, but most importantly, for his legend.
I love The Fits not because it’s an entertaining film, but because it is a mystery and a revelation which continues to teach me how to see.
As hyperreal as Schrödinger’s cat, the Driver glitches through a series of archetypes, and Drive itself escapes characterization as easily as he escapes his various pursuers.
By keeping us insistently within Bauby's point of view, inside the diving bell, Julian Schnabel reminds us of the range of living and feeling still available to us, if we extend ourselves.
When I recommend Hubie Halloween to you rabidly and over-zealously, when I hum with the sweet shocked shout of an Almond Joy with two almonds, what I mean is: at our most puerile and sensitive and fearful we are just as deserving of care as anybody else. Will you remember that?
As I walked up the steps to the Walter Reade theater, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of triumph, my first day back on campus. Everyone was there! In line, tired, clutching cheap coffee and festival badges. Some people got haircuts. Even the grumps were buzzing, happy to finally have some place to be.
As my favorite Fiddler on the Roof song says, “Many times, many men, took our homes, took our lives. Kings they were, gone they are. We’re still here!” We are still here—that’s our gam zu l’tovah.
The web of influences upon Over the Garden Wall is vast, but everything coheres around a core of classical Americana, one rooted firmly in the northeast.
