Features
Surely the appeal of entering a theater completely blind to what is about to appear on the screen is one other cinephiles share with me—but it’s also one that is difficult to realize.
As someone who grew up with an awareness of being at the margins of a larger diaspora, I found the concept of an all-embracing Chinese-language cinema that could reflect the complexity and variety of life in overseas communities to be a major discovery.
Don Roos’s The Other Woman promised to make for an appealingly middlebrow hour and a half in front of the tube (may I still call it that?), and which, in description, reminded me of all of those 1980s and early 1990s female-centric domestic dramedies studios used to churn out.
How about a very early computer-age romantic comedy, starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, called Desk Set? It’s hardly obscure, but I’d never seen it. Click, boom, presto. Instantly, it begins.
Newer modes of viewing require us to make decisions about what kinds of films we are willing to watch in nontraditional formats. It would be senseless to watch a widescreen epic like Lawrence of Arabia on a tablet device, yet many may choose to do so.
Fair to say, my life in New York revolved around movies. It’s no wonder that leaving again—about two and a half years ago, I moved to Portland, Oregon, for the hell of it, ready for a new experience—felt almost like I was banishing myself from the film world.
David Mackenzie’s Perfect Sense, Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter, Gregg Araki’s Kaboom
Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Cindy Meehl’s Buck, Dee Rees’s Pariah, Göran Hugo Olsson’s The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
Susanne Rostock’s Sing Your Song, James Marsh’s Project Nim
Years in Review
Most Endangered Species, 2010 Leading Man MVP, Worst Cinematography, Most Unexpectedly Moving Finale, Phat Tony Award, Most Unexpectedly Luscious, Most Boring British Film, Best Cameo, and more
Years in Review
Life During Wartime, Catfish, Enter the Void, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Black Swan, Get Low, The Secret in Their Eyes, Eat Pray Love, Winter’s Bone, Kick-Ass, Going the Distance/Love and Other Drugs
Years in Review
Alamar, Mother, White Material, Everyone Else, Another Year, Secret Sunshine, Our Beloved Month of August, The Social Network, Bluebeard, Sweetgrass
Nosferatu, The House of the Devil, My Dinner with Andre, The Thing, The X-Files: "Home," Empire of Passion, Rosemary’s Baby
New Year Sun, The Agonal Phase, Drifter, Recámara, Hearts Are Trump Again, White Lite, Meatdaze, razor’s edge, Corneille-Brecht ou “Rome, l’unique object de mon ressentiment!”, Dissonant, Shadow Cuts, A Thousand Julys, In the Absence of Light, Darkness Prevails, Rite of Spring