Guest post by Chris Forrester. In The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996), a lesbian video store clerk seeks out the history of a Black film star from the ’30s as she tries to make a movie of her own. Swoon (Tom Kalin, 1992) retells and relitigates the Leopold and Loeb murder case with a more… Read more »
Feature Articles
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) and the Hero’s Journey
There are many films which seem to be influenced by Joseph Campbell’s famous book The Hero of a Thousand Faces (first published in 1949), which is about his conception of an archetypal storytelling pattern known as “the hero’s journey.” They include but are not limited to Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977), The Lion… Read more »
Survivalism as Tragic Spectacle in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Guest post by Caleb Allison. The rules and regulations of the Depression-era dance marathon in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? seem simple enough. Rocky (Gig Young), the film’s imperiously duplicitous emcee, runs through them with all the vigor and verve of a carnival barker to open the film. Contestants get a 10-minute break every… Read more »
Showgirls Doesn’t Suck, It F*cks
Guest post by Chris Forrester. “It doesn’t suck,” offers a character at one point in Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls — a tease, or understatement in one way or another, from a film not uncommonly heralded as the worst of all time. In context, it’s a throwaway line of dialogue from the film’s doe-eyed, sharp-witted protagonist; outside… Read more »
Is Mapplethorpe Alive?
Guest post by Shawn Coughlin. In an interview with Film Independent, director Ondi Timoner recalls her decision to approach Mapplethorpe as a scripted drama rather than a documentary. She explains, “I wanted to bring [Robert Mapplethorpe] alive for you. You know, I felt like, ‘We want to see this man and we want to see… Read more »
The Bones of Narrativity: Mulholland Drive (2001)
David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) has usually been celebrated for its weirdly oneiric narrative hijinks and its unsettling doublings of character. In 2012, the critic Miriam Bale identified the film as a key entry in a subgenre she coined the “persona swap” film, in which the personalities of two female characters become blended or swapped… Read more »