When I was eleven, the owl that was in charge of delivering my Hogwarts acceptance letter must have lost its way somewhere over the Atlantic. However,…
The Film Canon
A series of articles and reviews of older movies that have entered, well, the film canon, for being creatively or culturally important. Everything from Citizen Kane to The Breakfast Club to Fargo to The Dark Knight. So we can all create a diverse list of essential movies for the young folk cinephiles to watch
The Film Canon: Hitchcock the Paranoiac Meets Highsmith the Misanthrope in Strangers on a Train (1951)
When Patricia Highsmith left the theater after seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of her debut novel Strangers on a Train, several thoughts flew thr…
Film Canon: Moi, Un Noir (1958)
“These young people are torn between tradition and mechanization, between Islam and alcohol. They are faithful to their beliefs, but idolize modern st…
The Film Canon: Lucía (1968)
Alongside Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1964), Humberto Solás’ Lucía (1968) was one of the formative texts of the new Cuban cinema established in the…
80 Years Later, Frank Capra’s naively idealistic You Can’t Take It With You seems more timely than ever
If Frank Capra’s cherubically bright and sunny screwball comedy You Can’t Take it With You seems hopelessly naive today a full eighty years after its …
The Film Canon: Matinee (1993)
By 1960 close to 90% of American households owned a television set. This little bit of trivia plays a significant role in Joe Dante’s period comedy, s…
The Film Canon: Unbreakable (2000)
With San Diego Comic Con only days away, it’s somewhat obligatory to discuss the comic book movie genre. For nearly two decades now, the genre h…