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THE SURFER

May 3, 2025 By Leave a Comment

THE SURFER

THE SURFER is a sundrenched, blood-soaked examination of toxic masculinity and generational trauma that hearkens back to the symbolist dramas of the 60s and 70s with its surreal overtones and pointed commentary. It is also the kind of film for which Nicolas Cage was gifted to us by the universe. If for no other reason,… Read More »

Tagged With: Allegory, Australia, beach, dehydrated incoherence, fascism, flensing, metaphor, surfing, surreal overtones, xenophobia

A DIFFERENT MAN

September 26, 2024 By Leave a Comment

A DIFFERENT MAN

Hell, opined Sartre, is other people, and I am not here to argue with that. I am here to note that filmmaker Aaron Schimberg has made an excellent counterpoint to that idea with A DIFFERENT MAN, an engrossing trip to Hades that is archly, and self-referentially metaphorical as it discovers that Hell is also oneself.… Read More »

Tagged With: conformity, disfigured face, fable, metaphor, self-referential

INSIDE

March 16, 2023 By Leave a Comment

INSIDE

If INSIDE were a short film, anything up to the Academy™ definition of same, which is to say, 40 minutes or less including the credits, it would be an incisive deconstruction of art as commerce rather than aesthetics driven by a powerful performance by Willem Dafoe. Instead, it runs for 1 hour and 45 minutes,… Read More »

Tagged With: art thief, contemporary art, evil technology, metaphor, New York City, starvation

EMILY

February 20, 2023 By Leave a Comment

EMILY

EMILY begins with its titular character, Emily Brontë (Emma Mackey) swooning. It’s a cleverly deceptive beginning to the story of a 19th-century rebel, and of the inspirations for her masterpiece of gothic fiction, Wuthering Heights. As played by Mackey, with an immersive and experiential script by screenwriter, Frances O’Connor, Emily is anything but the delicate,… Read More »

Tagged With: based on a true story, Emily Brontë, Heathcliffe, metaphor, opiate-induced state, West Yorkshire, Wuthering Heights

THE CARD COUNTER

December 23, 2021 By Leave a Comment

THE CARD COUNTER

With THE CARD COUNTER, writer/director Paul Schraeder returns to his favorite themes of sin and redemption. This is no tidy tale of a fall from grace precipated by a rash decision or a moment of weakness. We have at the center a flawed man with dark impulses that he cannot control once they have been… Read More »

Tagged With: Abu Ghraib, gambling, Las Vegas, metaphor, poker, vengeance

NIGHTMARE ALLEY

December 15, 2021 By Leave a Comment

NIGHTMARE ALLEY

Flames are never far from Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), starting with those lapping near, but not too near, his heels as he exits the house that he’s just set alight over the body he’s deposited beneath the floorboards. In Guillermo del Toro’s oneiric vision of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Notice, too, the… Read More »

Tagged With: based on a novel, carnival, con artist, mentalist, metaphor, mind reader

THE HUNT

March 22, 2020 By Leave a Comment

THE HUNT

No one is spared in Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof’s THE HUNT, nor, as, will be revealed by the end, should they be. Our intrepid filmmakers have eschewed taking sides in the current political morass, instead opting for a more challenging take on the foibles of human nature itself. A bold move guaranteed to raise… Read More »

Tagged With: black comedy, metaphor, political correctness, satire

THE SOUNDING — Catherine Eaton and Teddy Sears Interview

March 18, 2017 By Leave a Comment

THE SOUNDING — Catherine Eaton and Teddy Sears Interview

I sometimes warn the people I’m interviewing that I have a tendency to read way too much into things. When I did that before starting my phone conversation with Catherine Easton and Teddy Sears on March 3, 2017 about their film, THE SOUNDING, they both assured me that everything I read into the film was… Read More »

Tagged With: definition of mental disorder, indie filmmaking, metaphor, Oliver Sacks, otherness, Shakespeare, sound design, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, woman’s voice

Mitchell Lichtenstein Sharpens His TEETH

September 1, 2014 By Leave a Comment

Mitchell Lichtenstein Sharpens His TEETH

If there is any truth to the old saying that any publicity is good publicity, Mitchell Lichtenstein is on to something with his feature film debut, TEETH. The writer/director and erstwhile actor decided to go beyond the metaphor of the vagina dentata, and deal directly with that myth, the one that has haunted men though… Read More »

Tagged With: castration, cinema, director, fantasy, feature film debut, film, folklore, gender attitudtes, metaphor, Mitchell Lichetenstein, movie, narrative, nightmare, TEETH, vagina dentata, writer

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