Rainer Werner Fassbinder (I do not know the man) believed in love. He believed in its power to degrade and to destroy. Franz Biberkopf in Fox and His Friends (1975) wins the lottery and the love of a wealthier man, only to find that the object of love is never inert. In a Year of 13 Moons’ degendered protagonist Edwin/Elvira seeks castration to satisfy the joking desires of their supposed soulmate. The eponymous Martha (1974) sacrifices independence and happiness for... Read more
Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid (2023) is a sickness unto death. Or, to roll with another Kierkegaard book, it shoves your face into the concept of anxiety. Or, to catch the end of that text’s subtitle, it’s a deliberation on the hereditary problem of original sin. Take your pick. In any case, it’s a film for those who stay awake at night watching an endless algorithm of past blunders made more decreating by time. I saw a tweet recently (an... Read more
Ari Aster has cracked the code. Whatever your politics or your feelings about our “moment,” Eddington (2025) represents a formal achievement. He’s projected our phones and COVID onto the silver screen in a manner that is neither cloying nor haphazard. For how long have directors pussyfooted their way around this age of cyber schizophrenia? Phones might upend the plot of many pre-2010s horror films, but the real issue is knottier. Text messages, YouTube videos, doomscrolling—these are not interesting to watch.... Read more
She’s a woman chopping up a bird, knife slicing flesh from flesh. The camera lingers, pans up, revealing another bird, chirping in a cage. Alive. Does it look on in horror? I’m no bird psychologist. But we do. The woman’s face, swathed in shadow, announces itself with only a shock of curly black hair. Not even her eyes are visible. A Black man walks in wearing fine red serving clothes and tells her to stop singing “The Battle Hyman of... Read more
It’s a tale as old as time. People—sometimes crooks, sometimes friends, sometimes virtuous—come into possession of money. Perhaps they’ve killed someone. Maybe they chance upon a sack, bulging with cash. In all cases, the treasure tears them apart. Often they kill each other in creative ways. The moral is clear: money severs all ties. It breeds suspicion. In Chaucer’s Pardoner’s version, the tale takes the form of a sermon. His topic: radix malorum est cupiditas. Cupidity is the root of... Read more
I was six, going on seven for most of 2000. The millennium is a mystery to me. My best recollection consists of a redheaded pizza delivery boy sulking into a suicide booth only to reappear amid floating cars and chrome sheen. That year implies, however, something else—Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000)—a stoner comedy featuring Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott. I could barely play computer games at the time. But the title stuck in mind, and, like its main characters,... Read more
Confession: the only Sofia Coppola movie I’d seen until last week was The Bling Ring (2013). Confession: I didn’t care for The Bling Ring. Confession: of the three Coppola joints set before me in the last week—her best-known films from The Virgin Suicides (1998) through the subject of this essay—only one resonated. One spoke to me, cried out and found a listening ear. The phrase? Let them eat cake! I remember when Marie Antoinette (2006) came out, and I was... Read more
For those not in the know, If Footmen Tire you, What Will Horses Do? (1971) is a miraculous historical survival. Directed by an exploitation filmmaker turned evangelical Christian, Ron Ormond, the movie nearly disappeared forever. Only in 2018 did experts clean up an old copy. Ormond worked with aptly named fundamentalist Baptist preacher Estes W. Pirkle to produce one of the minister’s sermons. Their collaboration produced a singular work of art. Dead children, communists telling kids to pray to Fidel... Read more
The way I see it, there are four ways to explain my reaction to Celine Song’s sophomore effort, Materialists (2025): It is trying to “do something” and fails miserably. It is not trying to “do something” and fails miserably. I am a tasteless fraud so singularly out of step with the very concept of art that I should bury myself alive. It’s not for me. 3) is out for personal reasons. 4) seems possible, though, if it is “for someone,”... Read more
With thanks to J.G. Michel, host of the Parallax Views podcast, I have been taking in the films of Adam Rifkin. Rifkin strikes me as the rare journeyman-auteur hybrid. His filmography looks like a Jackson Pollack, covering everything from Charlie Sheen-narrated sororial dramas to sex-laden slashers and comedies starring wrestlers. Almost all “trash” by typical, middlebrow standards but always rich in canted angles and pitch perfect cuts. He does it all, it seems, for studios. Maybe for the money. But... Read more
Select your answer to see how you score.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In