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Establishing Shot Indiana University
Chris Forrester is a Chicago-based writer and occasional film programmer who's still chasing the high of seeing a Claire Denis movie for the first time (it's been five years and still nothing compares). A genre film-lover and Terence Davies devotee, he's interested in world cinema, canon building and the reclaiming of formerly-maligned films in the digital age.

Entries by Chris Forrester

Missing: Inaction

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A man looks out a window in between curtains

Still from Missing Chris Forrester articulates how Costa-Gavras’s drama subverts the idea of the “Hollywood true story” movie in favor of realism and harsh truths. For those unfamiliar with its filmmaker, Costa-Gavras’s Palme d’Or-winning Missing (1982 — it shared the win with the Turkish film Yol) may come as a bitter surprise. It stars Jack… Read more »

“Told You I’m Never Going Back:” Michael Mann’s Heat

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Two men sit across from each other in a restaurant

Two sides of the same coin: Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat Chris Forrester breaks down the mirroring between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s characters, the vicious cycle of the carceral system, and more in 1995’s cops-and-robbers saga Heat. You might expect the most enduring image of a three-hour crime epic from… Read more »

Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide: Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine

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A man in an elaborate feathered costume stands onstage with confetti falling

Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Brian Slade in Velvet Goldmine Chris Forrester explains how filmmaker Todd Haynes expertly crafted a David Bowie biopic without actually making a David Bowie biopic. While much better known for his vivid invocations and reworking of classical melodrama — Safe (1995), Far From Heaven (2002), Mildred Pierce (2011), Carol (2015), and… Read more »

Three (Im)perfect Crimes: Hitchcock’s Murder Plots

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A man gets ready to strangle a woman from behind as she answers the telephone

A fateful phone call in Dial M for Murder Chris Forrester delves into a trio of Alfred Hitchcock’s macabre masterpieces and the careful plotting — and unraveling — of their characters’ homicidal desires. Only a handful of filmmakers have remade their own films (Michael Haneke with Funny Games, George Sluizer with The Vanishing, Olivier Assayas… Read more »

Paul Schrader’s Lonely Men

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Close-up of a man's eyes

The eyes of a killer: Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver Chris Forrester contemplates a handful of works by Paul Schrader, which reveal a heavy debt to filmmaker Robert Bresson as they excavate the isolation, morality, and violence of their male protagonists. If you’re more than passingly acquainted with the films of Paul Schrader, this… Read more »

Crimes of the Present: David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds

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A man and woman walk among graves with screens

A grave use of technology in The Shrouds Chris Forrester digs into David Cronenberg’s latest work, a fascinating and rich meditation on loss, the digital age, and more. Where on release, David Cronenberg’s superlative Crimes of the Future (2022), about a network of scientist-performance artists facing a need to reckon with man’s legacy of plastic… Read more »

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