“The most overrated metric in movies is erratic, reductive, and easily hacked — and yet has Hollywood in its grip.”
film criticism
Posted inEditor's Pick
Back, Scoundrels: Eating the Rich on Film
“A century after ‘Battleship Potemkin,’ portraying class conflict on screen seems less black-and-white, and not just because we’ve invented color photography.”
Posted inFeature
How Wednesday Addams Birthed a Generation of Cynics
Emily Alford | Longreads | November 23, 2022 | 8 minutes (2,132 words) Midway through 1991’s The Addams Family, young Wednesday Addams attempts to supplement her family’s lost fortunes by selling poison lemonade for a nickel. Not everyone’s a willing customer. “I only like all-natural foods and beverages, organically grown with no preservatives,” a perky […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Making of Silent Bruce
The tragic end to Bruce Willis’ career — aphasia that challenges his speaking and cognition — shouldn’t befall anyone. Yet, as Matt Zoller Seitz points out in an incisive reading of the actor’s oeuvre, Willis long ago chose a path that would eerily presage his eventual diagnosis. You could say Willis’s career was never the […]
Posted inUncategorized
Final Girl, Terrible Place
I was expecting a handy theory. What I found was a way of seeing that would help me decode a script I’d been stuck in for much of my life.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Il Maestro
Martin Scorsese on “content,” the films of Federico Fellini, and the art of cinema.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Quotes, Story
Thumbing a Ride: What I Learned from Siskel and Ebert
Dipti S. Barot pays homage to the two irreplaceable voices who informed her love of good movies.
Posted inArts & Culture, Culture, Highlight, Quote Posts, Quotes
‘It Happened to My Father the Way It Happened’: The Truth About Green Book
At Vanity Fair, film critic K. Austin Collins explores the shaky “true story” of Green Book, the film by Peter Farrelly starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.
Posted inArts & Culture, Essays & Criticism, Highlight, Nonfiction, Unapologetic Women
The Art of the Pan
Sarah Miller recalls her days in the ’90s as a fickle movie critic.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Movie Assassin
This personal essay by Sarah Miller has gone viral and divided Twitter. Those who love the piece — about Miller’s struggle in 1996 to get away with panning “The English Patient” for an alt weekly paper — appreciate her brutal honesty and her irreverence toward the Serious Film establishment.