The history of American cinema in the twentieth century is understood today as a march from inhibition to expression. The films produced during the long reign of the Motion Picture Production Code, from 1934 to 1968, are assumed to be deficient for honoring limits on what could be seen and heard . . . . Continue Reading »
Workism is a new word, and it’s a good one. It captures the spirit of our elites, who from childhood are raised to be workers for work’s sake. Work is their priority, their imperative, their strategy, their solution, their delight, their governing philosophy. Being masters who toil, they . . . . Continue Reading »
We should object to prurient songs and stories because they are fundamentally untruthful—and thus bad art. Continue Reading »
The problem isn’t that most of the Disney-era Star Wars projects fail as films. The problem is that Disney almost certainly knows it and doesn’t care. Continue Reading »
Persons ripe for possession lack a proper telos. Continue Reading »
Religious films rarely receive critical acclaim these days, but a recent exception is Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. Continue Reading »
Everybody has a master, I suppose. Continue Reading »
Writer and director Martin McDonagh has put us in a Flannery O’Connor world. Continue Reading »
Bowie was a canary in the coal mine of post-1960s culture, plumbing its depths and soaring above almost everyone else. Continue Reading »
When the Sight & Sound poll—the oldest and most prestigious film ranking—declared in 2012 that Vertigo was the greatest film ever made, Armond White denounced the film’s admirers for their “obsessive interest in pathology and soullessness.” James Wolcott dismissed the . . . . Continue Reading »
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