Who Stole the American Dream? The Banking Bourgeoisie and Hell or High Water

A Critical Essay on the 2016 film Hell or High Water

American Pie at 20: Masculinity Now and Then

An Essay on American Pie, 

written as an application of Masculinity Studies 

for my graduate course in Literary Theory.

Any (Large) Screen Will Do

Thoughts On Film Projection and a Review of Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk"

Blind Spot 2016: Roman Polanski's Tess

Between Moonlight and Manchester

The List: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Blind Spot 2016: Last Year at Marienbad

Blind Spot 2016: Dr. Strangelove

Blind Spot 2016--Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch

Blind Spot 2016: The Deer Hunter

When I picked The Deer Hunter for my July Blind Spot way back in December, I had little idea that the film and its maker, the unfortunate Michael Cimino, would come up in conversation so much in the months between. Cimino died on July 2nd of this year at 77, leaving a legacy of really only two films. One an epic Best Picture winner, a film widely acclaimed as a masterpiece. The other an epic flop of massive proportions that may also be a masterpiece...at least it is to some. I haven't seen it.

The List: The Sandlot

Some movies just stick with you. The nostalgia makes each viewing greater. David Mickey Evans' 1993 film The Sandlot is one of those, made even better by the fact that it is actually about nostalgia. 

Missed Masterpieces: Three Films of Jeff Nichols

Over and over throughout last year, I kept hearing about this movie coming out, a movie which lay in wait for whatever reason for more than a year, Midnight Special, the new film from Jeff Nichols, a filmmaker I'd been hearing about for years but kept missing.

In Defense of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village

It's goes without saying, but there will be **MAJOR SPOILERS** here. But I was spoiled BEFORE I ever saw this film, and I think that made me love it more.

Blind Spot 2016: Imitation of Life (1959)

I know it's April, but this is my March Blind Spot. Thanks for the delayed shipment, Netflix. You ruined my scheme. Or, it's probably my fault for always forgetting to shift my queue and waiting until the end of the month...

Anyway, after years, I have FINALLY watched Douglas Sirk's 1959 supreme "women's weepie," Imitation of Life. My Mom was born in 1959. This is my Mom's favorite movie, or at least one she talks about all the time. She, no doubt, tried to get me to watch this thing many times when I was young. I always rain checked it though, never bought in. I made it a point, this year, to finally do it. I'm proud of myself.

Blind Spot 2015: Robert Altman's 3 Women

Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) goes across the street to the hospital to eat, rambles on and on to the doctors there about recipes she wants to try out, flirts uncontrollably. Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) blow bubbles in her Coke, wanders around, gazes, mimics, obsesses over Millie. Willie Hart (Janice Rule) paints murals; she is the strong, silent type, married to the cowboy landlord Edgar (Robert Fortier) and pregnant with his baby.

Blind Spot 2015 - Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Remember when you were a kid, a young teen perhaps, maybe even middle school age, and you're with your friends and and they're all always talking about something you seriously just don't get. For me, that was WWF wrestling. My friends were all "Did you watch Raw last night?" And I'm all like, nodding my head in silent agreement. I just didn't get it. I did not "smell what The Rock was cooking." And "that's the bottom line because", well, I said so.

I sometimes feel that way about movies I'm seeing for the first time that are deemed "great" or "classic" or "masterpiece." It's almost like dealing with peer pressure.

And that's partially my reaction to Rainer Werner Fassbinder's low-budget 1974 love story Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. I get it for the most part. But as far as "this is one of the best movies ever"...I'm only part of the way there.

Blind Spot 2015: Mean Streets

Created and Hosted by Ryan McNeil at The Matinee

I have tried to watch Martin Scorsese's 1973 tale of sins and sinners, Mean Streets, before. I failed to make it through it. I think I might have been under the influence of something and fallen asleep. I was in college at the time after all. Anyhow, I did it right this time. And on first full viewing alone, this film stands as a movie that doesn't totally work for me, or maybe at all. It's there visually, and I mean really there. Let's say this: On reaction alone, when this movie works, it really works. When it doesn't, it really doesn't.

The big opposition for me comes with the backbone of this thing, the plot, or lack of plot. I like the simplicity:  A small-time Little Italy tough named Charlie (Harvey Keitel) struggles with an unstable best friend, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), a secretive relationship with the epileptic Teresa (Amy Robinson), and, most importantly, his own demons, as driven by deep Catholic guilt. Charlie is on the up-and-up with made guy, Michael (Richard Romanus), and even with the higher-ups, including his uncle Giovanni (Cesare Danova), but the obstacles in his path and his compassionate demeanor keep him from the kind of success he thinks he wants.

It Sure Does

A Review by Kevin Powers

★★★★

Let us get one thing out there right off the bat:  I almost never seek out horror movies, especially the dime-a-dozen, PG-13 jump scare, found footage, demon possession, etc., crap that's out there these days. But there's a part of me that regrets not seeing more, though, even of those. I certainly regret not seeing more of the classic horror movies pre-"Halloween."

Even for a non-horror kind of guy, when horror movies work for me, they really work. The best horror movies, to me, are the ones that don't offer solutions but simply play on basic fears. The ones that won't let go long after you see them. Only a few "scary movies" really get down to what's really scary to human beings. That being a ghost, or person, or some other entity, or even just a fear inside our own psyches that stalks us.

Blind Spot 2015: Bonnie and Clyde

Created and Hosted by Ryan McNeil at The Matinee. 

There's a three word sentence in this film that seems to get all the credit:  "We rob banks." By the time Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) repeats this line upon meeting gas station attendant C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard), I was already enraptured in another three word sentence uttered early on by the second of the titular characters, Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty):  "You're a knockout."

And it is. And she is. And he is. And everything about this movie is a knockout. From the French New Wave inspired cinematography and editing to the classically Americana repetition of Flatt and Scruggs' "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" to the sheer "babe" (as a friend of mine put it in an Instagram conversation yesterday) quality of Dunaway and Beatty, this movie is visually unforgettable. A knockout.

Cinderella, courageous and kind

"Cinderella"     ★★★ 1/2

A Review by Kevin Powers

Every week for the past few months, I have participated in a weekly blog series called Thursday Movie Picks. A certain theme, or category, is thrown down, and movie bloggers around the world make a list of three picks that fit that theme. Last week's theme was Live-Action Fairy Tale Adaptations. I struggled. I honestly can't remember seeing one, especially one of the traditional ones, like say, "Cinderella."

I haven't seen the 1950 Disney Animated “Cinderella” in years, but I do know that screenwriter Chris Weitz ("About a Boy", "The Golden Compass") has done an incredible job of updating and fully enriching this already well-known fairy tale.