The magic of Miyazaki’s worlds works on multiple levels. Yubaba’s telephone is a chattering skull; Zeniba’s sentient lamppost pogos around on a single hand; paper spies, soot slaves, and spirit trains complete with neon ghost billboards. But, also, Haku convinces a diddering, unmoored Chihiro to eat by lying, telling her he put a spell on the food that will return her strength to her. (Silly Chihiro, that’s what food does.) While the narrative density of the film—the ever-changing nature of…

Never, not even once, surprised me—a fact which surprised me, since I went in unfamiliar with the Dracula/Nosferatu narratives. Eggers must have disliked Skinamarink, but he took away the wrong lessons—where Kyle Edward Ball relished in pointing his camera at the corners of rooms, Eggers seems deathly afraid to do so. Every scene is the same flat, symmetrical, dull mess. The camera points at one wall, before panning to face the adjacent, endlessly perambulating—or, like Depp’s Ellen, somnambulating—rarely landing on…

Much too much has been said about Spielberg’s shortcomings when it comes to handling serious material: the Holocaust in Schindler’s List, the American slave trade in Amistad, a black woman’s abuse in The Color Purple; I’d like to highlight the ways in which he, as a filmmaker, as an artist, is particularly suited to such subject matter. Nothing may illustrate this better than the fact that I came out of Schindler’s List—one of the most popular, lauded, awarded, discussed, written…

Almost 2 months ago, Paul Thomas Anderson surprised me. He went down into his hole, swung his pickaxe, and emerged with an Amethyst, so I decided to see how he fared with oil. Unfortunately there were no surprises to delight in this time around. The filmmaker that seemed so free in Inherent Vice and even Licorice Pizza is constrained here to making a singular statement, over and over.

Perhaps it’s the purpose of the statement that’s supposed to give There…

Q&A with Ethan and Maya Hawke. They were very cool 👍🏽

Has some rough edges and falters a bit when it tries to adapt O'Connor's short stories. I've only read a handful and I still remember them vividly several years later, this ain't that. Still a success for me since it engages with questions I ask myself daily ("God's in the room with me right now?", "How can I translate something that I don't understand?", "I have to keep living,…