Full transparency: all Blu-rays reviewed were provided by Kino Lorber and Criterion. I miss going to the movie theater so much. I would battle God atop a hilltop to even just sit and watch something in a darkened room and crowd full of enthusiastic and virus-free film lovers. Sadly, I cannot “Stone Cold Stunner” the… Read more »
Radium Girls (Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler, 2018) takes its inspiration from the infuriating history of watch-dial painters of the 1910s-1930s who were poisoned and then abandoned by the radium industry. Discovered in 1898 by the Curies, radium was all the rage in the early decades of the 20th century. Thought to be a… Read more »
Failure is an underexplored subject in American cinema. The struggles and joys of achieving success are portrayed in blockbuster after blockbuster, while the unique phenomenon of processing failure and tentatively beginning the process of moving beyond it is less common to encounter in a mainstream American movie. Thankfully, Kris Rey’s new film I Used to Go… Read more »
We find it fascinating when a star transforms themselves for a role. Rebecca Romijn enduring hours of prosthetics for her role as Mystique… Jared Leto losing 30 lbs for Dallas Buyer’s Club… Christian Bale losing an even more extreme 60 lbs for The Machinist… Charlize Theron gaining 30 lbs and donning latex make-up to add… Read more »
Guest post by Christine Peralta. Deeply nuanced and wonderfully shot, Lingua Franca is a beautiful film about a Filipina trans woman living in New York named Olivia. Olivia is portrayed by Isabel Sandoval, who also wrote and directed the film. Lingua Franca starts with two phone calls, simple and brief phone conversations that convey the complexity… Read more »
Guest post by Lisa-Marie Napoli, Director of the Political and Civic Engagement program at Indiana University. At the end of watching a good film, I like to sit for a few minutes, catch my breath, and reflect on what the film means to me, how it informs my thinking, and how it brings to light… Read more »
