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A Thousand Moves Ahead: The Queen’s Gambit

Jacob Mendelsohn·
Issue 91: Best of 2020
All of our stories are coming of age stories, no matter how old we are, and the beauty of a great coming of age story is that by the last act our hero has done that which we all desire: become their whole selves. Read More

Staring All Over Again

Nathaniel Missildine·
Extras
The Elephant Man (1980) | art by Tony Stella
A tremor of vulnerability renewed itself as I sat down to watch The Elephant Man again. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. Am I resilient enough for this now? Am I finally old enough to see it?  Read More

Warring Bodies: On Beanpole and Swallow

Sucheta Chakraborty·
Issue 91: Best of 2020
Beanpole | MUBI
Given their diverging contexts and plots, Beanpole and Swallow may not always share perspectives on issues, but the issues their stories pivot around are curiously the same.   Read More

We Weren’t Made to Endure This

Emma Koch·
Issue 91: Best of 2020
The Old Guard | Netflix
Like many superhero films, Gina Prince-Bythewood's The Old Guard is a meditation on heroism—but rather than asking what makes someone heroic, it questions how acts of heroism actually change people. Read More

The Soundcloud Rappers at the End of the World

Jessica McGoff·
Issue 91: Best of 2020
Crestone (2020)
It’s not important to distinguish what is truth and what is fiction in Crestone; the collapsing of these boundaries is what gives Marnie Ellen Hertzler's documentary the same sense of apocalypse we've felt this past year, perceptively real in its feeling of unreality. Read More

How Sweet It Is: Dick Johnson Is Dead

Joel Mayward·
Issue 91: Best of 2020
Dick Johnson is Dead (2020) | art by Tony Stella
Dick Johnson Is Dead wisely holds the mystery of human mortality with a generous open hand, affirming our pain while reminding us of grace. Read More

Love, Friendship, and Vengeance: Reimagining Romance in Promising Young Woman

Jordan Crucchiola·
Issue 91: Best of 2020
Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman | art by Tony Stella
Along with being a damn entertaining ride, an understanding of the vital intimacy between women makes Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman feel gorgeously, confrontationally female. Read More

Strange Country

Adefisayo Adeyeye·
Issue 91: Best of 2020
His House | Netflix
In His House, the spirit haunts, inhabiting space the same way a thought takes up residence in the mind. Worry, fears—these are ghosts. There and not there. False and yet very real.  Read More

Gunfighter of the Gospel

Julia Selinger·
Issue 91: Best of 2020
Ethan Hawke in First Reformed and The Good Lord Bird
First Reformed and The Good Lord Bird can best be linked by a common, disheartening truth: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Read More

Into the Blue: Transposing the Frame in Derek Jarman’s Blue

Edwin Miles·
Issue 90: Frames
Blue (Jarman, 1993)
Derek Jarman’s Blue is a film that pushes the limits of cinematic expression, an unwavering blue screen accompanied by a layered soundscape of voices, music, and lyrically written dialogue. Read More

A Drop of Water Reflecting a Divided World

Nikola Grozdanovic·
Issue 90: Frames
A scene from The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky, 1986)
The Sacrifice is not as widely celebrated as Tarkovsky's previous masterpieces, but it’s the most germane to our current global disarray. Read More

In The Infinite Glow

Fran Hoepfner·
Issue 90: Frames
The Lego Batman Movie | Warmer Bros.
A throwaway joke in a 105-minute film watched nearly four years ago in a city I’ve only been to twice stands firm like a monolith in the wavy goop of my brain. It is nothing; it is everything. Read More
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Twitter

  • It’s time for our first Sunday Twitter Focus of 2021: Send us your best #FirstImpressions—film entrances that tell… twitter.com/i/web/status/13535…

    About 13 hours ago

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