"It is one of the miracles of cinema that in 1941 a first-time director; a cynical, hard-drinking writer; an innovative cinematographer, and a group of New York stage and radio actors were given the keys to a studio and total control, and made a masterpiece. Read more...
35 years after the fact, the Vietnam War remains a divisive event in American history. Anti-communist sentiment stemming from the Cold War was tempered by an increasing desire for isolationism within the American populace, and both of these viewpoints were complicated by the introduction of a media presence in Vietnam which allowed news to be transported from the front faster than ever before. Read more...
In Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005) we see the binary character study of two men engaging in a socially unacceptable love affair throughout a lifetime. The implications of such a plotline give Brokeback Mountain a public persona that is incorrectly associated with New Queer Cinema. Read more...
The question of women in the American military during the 1990s was rife with controversy due to the multiple sex scandals reported by the media from harassment to rape. Read more...
In 2007 Fox Searchlight released the independently produced film Juno (Jason Reitman) about the unexpected pregnancy of the title character. Directed by Retiman with a screenplay by Diablo Cody, Juno was nominated for several Academy Awards and won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Read more...
I remember the first time I saw Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998), it was showing on a paid cable channel that I scrolled past and then back again to see "what in the world was that?" I sat through the exhilarating ride and didn't find out what the film was called until days later. The next time I watched it, years later, was for my Intro to Film course here at UCD and with that screening I found an unexpected passion coursing through my being for it. Read more...
One of Hitchcock's favorite themes is the innocent man caught in a desperate situation, especially one is which he appears guilty of some crime. Sometimes the innocence or guilt is ambiguous; more often, it is clear to the viewer but unclear to the other characters in the film. Read more...
As Ofelia continues to try to make sense of the unjust and barbarous world around her, events continue to take flight in reality and in her supernatural realm. Once Ofelia attempts stealing her baby brother back from the Captain and drugging his drink, incidents begin to quickly spiral downward, like the staircase Ofelia dies upon in the labyrinth. Read more...
Very rarely does the world of art and film intersect. Obviously movies draw inspiration from the classic paintings of Art History (for example, Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven draws heavily from the visual style of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth.) Yet, never have these two mediums built off of one another, or responded to each other. However, there was one same moment in the history of art where an entire movement was created as a reaction to film, and that was Futurism. Read more...
Reading everyone's insightful and detailed posts on the films near or dear to them (or films they've finally found an excuse to watch, such as Stefan's The Warriors), I find myself with the inability to discuss anything similar. Instead I keep returning the film on this year's literature comp. exam: Nicole Holofcener's Lovely & Amazing (2001). Read more...
Film critic Jim Emerson will be at the University of Colorado in Boulder all next week (April 4-9) at the annual Conference on World Affairs (CWA). Read more...
Call it a dark fascination, but I've always been compelled by stories of what our world will look like when our contemporary structure degenerates. I'm not so much a pessimist as I am a realist that believes apocalyptic tales can help us to more honestly look at who we are. Read more...
I want to be Anthony Lane, the film critic for The New Yorker. Not just have his life, but be him. Certainly, it would be nice to be a rostered member of The New Yorker literati, and to have one's own Facebook fan club would be something else (although I can't for the life of me understand why the "Anthony Lane Fan Club" has only 98 members.) Read more...
The silhouette of a woman with unkempt hair flickers in an attic window sending a cautionary chill up an observer's spine. Something is out of place. Mental stability and social norms no longer feel as reliable as they should. This is the nature of the gothic nightmare. Read more...
So you want to try your hand at blogging or, if you're currently a "Film Theory & Criticism" student at the University of Colorado Denver, you've been instructed to ("if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight")! Fret not. Read more...
I'm often asked if my training as a film scholar has taken all the fun out of watching movies. "Can you just watch a movie for entertainment, or are you always analyzing it?" people ask. I used to say that there were some films I could watch uncritically, simply enjoying the two hours of escapism. Now I know that isn't true. Read more...
Tim O'Brien says, "A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it's a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die though, one of the dead guys says, 'The fuck you do that for?' and the jumper says, 'Story of my life, man,' and the other guy starts to smile but he's dead. That's a true war story that never happened" (83-4). Read more...
Martin Scorsese's gangster film The Departed (2006) can be read as a dramatization of ego development and pathology that uses its crime narrative and dramatis personae as a grid for mapping the psychological possibilities in human beings (though it is especially concerned with men). Read more...
Spanish cinema has been indelibly marked by the contribution of the films of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar. The name has become synonymous with Spanish cinema, and his filmic influence has marked the reformation of post-Franco Spain. Read more...
"I find Hitchcock's films to be a bed of paradoxes and ambiguities in which identity is questioned and explored" (297), Lucretia Knapp writes in her essay "The Queer Voice in Marnie." Indeed, Hitchcock often deals with the matter of identity in his films, as his characters struggle to establish or reestablish their selves. In this vein, he frequently utilizes costuming to demonstrate the changeable nature of identity. Read more...
The evolution of the American film industry has seen a multitude of transformations since its inception. From the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930's and 40's, to the edgy, unconventional and personal films of the 1970's, to the big budget, sequel driven movies of today, Hollywood has transformed into a finely tuned mass consumer machine, based on proven formulas and marketable storylines that often sacrifice substance over style. Director Robert Altman's career spans over two highly different periods in the American film industry. Read more...
All stories may be fiction, but all of history is open to interpretation. Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now took fictional representation of a factual subject to a new level in the film's depiction of the Vietnam War. Coppola's blurred lines between narrative fiction and historical fact have caused debate over crediting the film as an historical film or as one of mere entertainment. Read more...
It's the 23rd of January 1943. The evening paper mentions that Sergei Eisenstein celebrates his 45th birthday today, The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts record is released, and allied forces led by General Montgomery capture Tripoli ("On This Day," "Carnegie Hall Concerts, January 1943," and "WWII Combat Chronology"). The movie Casablanca also opens throughout US theaters today; however, this film premiered in New York two months earlier on the 26th of November 1942. Read more...
Film criticism is a community. Since the beginning of the film era people have been watching, and talking about, and writing about movies. Read more...
Movies in 203 was created to extend the Film Studies program at the University of Colorado Denver out of the classroom and into the greater community of film criticism. We publish the writings of students, alumni, and faculty.
Are you a UCD student (or former student) with a film blog? Let us know and we'll link to it here.