“Ultimately, Nomadland’s affective impact, and the sense of authenticity felt in McDormand’s performance should be understood within a colonialist standard of authenticity rooted in the indigenisation of whiteness – and the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty.”
Category: Film & TV
[Essay] Breaking Urns: From Ingmar Bergman to Yo La Tengo — John Talbird
“The atrocities of World War II and then all the post-war proxy-wars, most especially Vietnam, ossified and then shattered narrative wholes, all those well-wrought urns.”
[Essay] Back To The Verdict — Greg Gerke
“It’s a brittle limestone tragedy rather than Shakespearean, the kind Bergman, Fellini, and Antonioni patented years ago.”
[Essay] Once Again, the Western — Ben Lewellyn-Taylor
“White male anxiety about an impending age where his place is not solidified is nothing new. We know this story too well, yet on screen white men go on killing, their violent delights our supposed entertainment.”
[Essay] Metaphysical Detectives: Guilt, Grace, and Gaze in the World of Twin Peaks — Cam Scott
“Lynch and Frost are especially masterful where this feeling of estrangement is concerned.”
[Essay] ‘What’s Going On?’: The Moral Philosophy of A Serious Man — James Mcloughlin
“The Coens do not put characters such as Larry through the mill gratuitously. Rather, they fiercely interrogate aspects of their own identities in order to fully understand themselves and their world.”
[Essay] Kidnapping North Korean Cinema: Kim Jong-il, Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee — Hannah Streck
“Kim Jong-Il, the all-powerful fan-boy, kidnapped his favourite artists to make movies that would put North Korea on the cinematic map.”
[Essay] Unamerican Fictions: All that is Solid Melts into Weird — Louis Armand
“Thor Garcia’s novel is a swan song for an amnesiac America’s ‘innocence regained’, afforded by the supposed victory over the communist USSR; a kind of ‘fear and loathing’ in the age of hyperreality.”
[Essay] Lost in Chinatown: Confusion, Music, more Confusion — Jacob Cunningham
“Throughout the film, the music continues to mix elements influenced by the classic Hollywood string sound and jazz of the 1930s with movements that evince how Goldsmith pointedly relates his work to the contemporary musical world surrounding him in 1974.”
[Essay] Caché: Colonial Misappropriation or Postcolonial Masterpiece? — Joseph Barker
“Haneke provides a masterful critique of contemporary postcolonial reality.”
[Essay] American Honey and The American Dream – Will Moffitt
“American Honey recognises the dream for what it is, an epiphanic abstraction that, for better or worse, imbues otherwise vacuous lives with meaning and purpose.”
[Essay] Conforming to Type: Film as Subversion — Louis Armand
“Like Joyce in Ulysses, Godard’s orientation towards Shakespeare is one of devotional iconoclasm – a combination of Oedipal patricide and re-embodiment.”
[Essay] Flat Affect as Deconstruction: Berlant, Derrida and Tilda Swinton — Josh Mcloughlin
“Swinton’s flat affect reiterates Butler’s always-already inscribed gendered body.”
[Essay] Subversive Cinema from Waters to Carax — Louis Armand
“Where cinema was, ego will be.”
[Essay] Being Lynchian — Eliza Slawther
“Lynch’s magic lies in seamlessly blending a prosaic matter—the realism of small-town life—with a poetic surrealist form.”
[Short film] Death of An Actor — Harry Sherriff
“Joe and Ben are rehearsing a play but there’s one stumbling block. Ben can’t die.”
[Short film] Ted, Fred & Deb — Harry Sherriff
“Fred & Deb are assassins based in Manchester. They have been sent on an important job by their boss, Ted.”
[Short film] Lonely Guy — Harry Sherriff
“A love letter to bus-stop weirdos.”
New Critique 