Film, the measure of all things

Because film is thought of as a primarily visual medium, it’s easy to overlook the integral role of sound design in on-screen storytelling – particularly when it seems to fade into the background during movies that lack flashy soundtracks and blockbuster action. Working from a pivotal scene from Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005), this video essay from Evan Puschak (also known as the Nerdwriter) probes the multitude of subtle ways in which sound design constructs and defines how viewers experience the film. Cleverly edited, Puschak’s piece is both an insightful exploration of audiovisual stor...

Pop reviews and in-depth analyses of current and classic films from around the world.

Richard Fleischer’s Follow Me Quietly (1948) holds at its center an image so odd and resonant that its phantoms crowd the surface.

The Ornithologist is fascinating, sensually profane and delightful, adjectives that, depending on who you ask, could easily apply to its creator as well.

Pop reviews and in-depth analyses of current and classic films from around the world.

This 1983 documentary gets Burroughs right between the eyes.

David Lee Smith, Vanessa Williams and Michael Dorn star in Richard Schenkman's sci-fi sequel.

I started something in 2012. Whenever I saw a new movie I liked, I would jump onto Twitter, identify the movie, then simply tweet: “More…

Coming of age film tipped to win at Oscars deals with sexual and religious awakening

ur favourite time of year has rolled around again: the publication of the results from the Senses of Cinema World Poll. It’s always so gratifying to look at the incredible array of writers who contribute to this annual reflection on what was best for us in our year at the cinema. They come from all over […]

In interviews, Daniel Kaluuya seems to rebut Mr. Jackson’s comments about the black experience in Britain being less fraught than that in the United States.

At a film club for young women who have escaped bleak lives, Charlie Chaplin’s silents offered an escape. Then they learned about his offscreen life.

This argument strikes me as mostly bullshit: The acclaimed depiction of gay romance forgoes politics and doesn’t mention AIDS—but there are hints at a broader, darker context for its story.

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other astronomical and space event that's out of this world.

It’s hard to believe that 2017 is coming to an end. Indeed, it’s somewhat hard to believe we managed to get through the year without the apocalypse happening, considering the likes of Trump and North Korea. Alongside the political tumult, there have been some great LGBT-films doing the rounds, and it’s time for us to […]

Has the video essay become a victim of its own success? These digitally produced, critical (or at times, not-so-critical) reworkings of film and media continue to proliferate at a rate beyond what anyone can possibly keep up with. Their ubiquity marks them as a sure sign of film culture’s passage into the era of digital and social media. As an open-source method to express our media-based experiences to ourselves and others, the video essay can be seen as a powerful means by which a generation of digital natives makes sense of its contemporary condition of audiovisual over-saturation. At it...

David Davidson 1. Acres (Rebeccah Love) 2. Big Little Lies (Jean-Marc Vallée) 3. Nirvanna The Band The Show Season 1 and 2 (...

There are two types of “found” objects that appear in the films of Janie Geiser. The first include her many thrift store finds—scraps of wallpaper, rulers and other measuring instruments, anatomica…

En un texto enmarañado y hermoso del que no recuerdo ni el nombre ni el lugar de su publicación, Peter Wollen intenta caracterizar la pasión cinéfila como una especie de enfermedad, una modesta tara infantil por la que se detiene sin mayor éxito la inserción traumática en el mundo. El cinéfilo quiere entregarse al cine […]