Three TV Shows That Promise an Intriguing Viewing Experience
These three TV shows of early spring 2024 are the most compelling, mind-boggling, and expensive-looking ones to watch before you go back out in the sun.
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‘The Zone of Interest’ and Our Modern Day Comforts
Can The Zone of Interest, a film about a Nazi commandant and his family, have something to say about the modern day comforts so many enjoy?
Bottlerock Napa Valley 2023 Delivers Another Intoxicating Experience
Bottlerock Napa Valley has arguably seized the crown as the premiere large-scale rock festival in California, with its allegiance to the Bay Area’s rock heritage.
The Russo-Ukraine War Is a Mediated War – Not Just a War on the Media
How the Russo-Ukraine War generated a media dimension of its own and how it linked the myths of the past century to the challenges of our own.
‘The Afghanistan Papers’ Reveals How Not to Fight a War
Craig Whitlock’s searing Afghanistan war book is a jaw-dropping compilation of arrogance and stupidities that nobody wanted to see.
NYFF: ‘Notturno’ Looks Passively at the Chaos in the Middle East
Gianfranco Rosi's expansive documentary, Notturno, is far too remote for its burningly immediate subject matter.
The Dance of Male Forms in Denis’ ‘Beau travail’
Claire Denis' masterwork of cinematic poetry, Beau travail, is a cinematic ballet that tracks through tone and style the sublimation of violent masculine complexes into the silent convulsions of male angst.
Decode the Pre-Code: Four Hot Early Talkies Hit Blu-Ray
Sinuous camera moves and stylish direction, endings that surely wouldn't have flown after the Code crackdown: four pre-code talkies from Cecil B. DeMille, Phil Goldstone, Victor Halperin, and Stuart Walker.
Nazis, Nostalgia, and Critique in Taika Waititi’s ‘Jojo Rabbit’
Arriving amidst the exhaustion of the past (21st century cultural stagnation), Waititi locates a new potential object for the nostalgic gaze with Jojo Rabbit: unpleasant and traumatic events themselves.
Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’ and Pedagogical Filmmaking in the Movement for Black Lives
As with Da 5 Bloods, Spike Lee's films are replete with experimental aesthetics that deconstruct the conventions of (white) Hollywood and re-frame and re-contextualize Black lives and Black history.
There’s a War Going on: Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’
Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods engages with the notion of perpetual conflict. But how well does it fit into the current social milieu of demonstrations against police violence?
We Must Not Mean What We Say: On Godard’s ‘Le Petit Soldat’
While philosopher Stanley Cavell endeavors to show that we must mean what we say, Godard’s Bruno Forestier of Le Petit Soldat suggests that we simply cannot and must not mean what we say.