Film Analyses/Reviews

Film Analyses/Reviews

The Sacraments of Genre: Coppola, DePalma, Scorsese

Operatic Style and Structure in Coppola's "Godfather Trilogy" (Pt. I) (Pt. II)

The Tragedy of Michael Corleone in "The Godfather: Part III"

Animated Nature: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Empathy in Miyazaki Hayao's Ecophilosophy

The Precarious Politics of Precious: A Close Reading of a Cinematic Text (X)

As I Lay Dying: Violence and Subjectivity in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (X)

Shifting Gears and Paradigms at the Movies: Masculinity, Automobility, and the Rhetorical Dimensions of "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Review: Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola

Two Thousand Light Years from Home: Scorsese's Big CASINO (X)

TIME PIECES: WONG KAR-WAI AND THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY (X)

Matter out of Place: Carnival, Containment, and Cultural Recovery in Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" (X)

Disney's Moana, the Colonial Screenplay, and Indigenous Labor Extraction in Hollywood Fantasy Films

Viewing Sinophone Cinema Through a French Theoretical Lens: Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood For Love" and 2046 and Deleuze's "Cinema" (X)

The Parallelism of the Fantastic and the Real: Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth/El Laberinto del fauno and Neomagical Realism (X)

"Back to the Future": Oedipus as Time Traveller ("Retour vers le futur": Oedipe, voyageur du temps)

Beyond the Male Romance: Repetition as Failure and Success in Apocalypse Now

Beautiful Friendship: Masculinity and Nationalism in "Casablanca"

GIRL POWER: BACK TO THE FUTURE OF FEMINIST SCIENCE FICTION WITH INTO THE FOREST AND ARRIVAL

"Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli." How Machiavelli's The Prince Exemplifies the Gangster in The Godfather and A Bronx Tale

Film as Literature: TWO SCREENPLAYS (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas)

Where Did the Goodfellas Learn How to Cook? Gender, Labor, and the Italian American Experience

Goodfellas Review (1991)

Where is the Bawdy? Falstaffian Politics in Gus Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho" (X)

The Filmmaker as DJ: Martin Scorsese’s Compiled Score for Casino (1995)

EAST Meets WEST: "Casablanca vs. The Seven Samurai"

The Power of Adaptation in "Apocalypse Now"

Animalizing "Jurassic Park's" Dinosaurs: Blockbuster Schemata and Cross-Cultural Cognition in the Threat Scene

Review: American Psycho

The Feminine Hero of The Silence of the Lambs (X)

"Fight Club'"s Queer Representations (X)

Tiny Life: Technology and Masculinity in the Films of David Fincher (X)

Complex Design in "The Empire Strikes Back" (X)

SAVAGE PLACES REVISITED: CONRAD'S "HEART OF DARKNESS" AND COPPOLA'S "APOCALYPSE NOW"

PORTRAITS OF THE POSTMODERN PERSON IN TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, AND THE KING OF COMEDY

(Taxi Driver) (Raging Bull)

Homosexuality in "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975): Televisual Surfaces and a "Natural" Man (X)

Where Did All the Heroes Go? (Dog Day Afternoon)

Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons

God's Lonely Man: "Taxi Driver" in Script and Screen

A Slice of Delirium: Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" Revisited

Kafka on the Screen: Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" (X)

Stalking 'The Deer Hunter'

Gender, Genre, and Myth in "Thelma and Louise" (X)

Restaging the War: "The Deer Hunter" and the Primal Scene of Violence

"The Godfather, I and II": Patterns of Corruption (X)

Making the Milk into a Milkshake: Adapting Upton Sinclair's "Oil!" into P. T. Anderson's "There Will Be Blood"

Child of the Long Take: Alfonso Cuaron's Film Aesthetics in the Shadow of Globalization

THE SWOLLEN BOY: Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS and Diggler Days

Love in Time: Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, and Richard Linklater's "Before" Films

Other

Al Pacino (X)

Lies and Loneliness: An Interview with Tony Leung Chiu Wai

Wong Kar-Wai (Interview)

Imagism and Martin Scorsese: Images Suspended and Extended

Docufictions: An Interview with Martin Scorsese on Documentary Film

Orson Welles: The Human Side of Genius

Eavesdropping On Female Voices: A WHO'S WHO OF CONTEMPORARY WOMEN FILMMAKERS (1987)

Disappearance of Elaine May

THE NON-DIEGETIC FALLACY: FILM, MUSIC, AND NARRATIVE SPACE

Hollywood Movie Dialogue and the "Real Realism" of John Cassavetes

THE WORK OF JOHN CASSAVETES: SCRIPT, PERFORMANCE STYLE, AND IMPROVISATION

The Adventure of Insecurity: The Films of John Cassavetes

Prospero's Muccs: The Meaning of Martin Scorsese's Italian American Dialect

Between Colorblind and Colorconscious: Contemporary Hollywood Films and Struggles Over Racial Representation

The Militarization of Marvel's Avengers

BEFORE AND AFTER "JAWS": CHANGING REPRESENTATIONS OF SHARK ATTACKS

Sound Doctrine: An Interview with Walter Murch

Made Men (Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Scorsese Interview)

Beautiful Resistance: The Early Films of Wong Kar-wai

Who Knew It Could Get Worse? When Nixon Haunted the New Hollywood

TV

Sticking Together, Falling Apart: "The Sopranos" and the American Moral Order

"Mad Men"'s Color Schemes: A Changing Palette of Working Women

ETHICAL UPLIFT, "NOT FOR NUTHIN" (Review: The Sopranos)

Writing

Story: Substance, Structure, Style by Robert Mckee

Dialogue - Robert McKee

THE WRITER’S JOURNEY Mythic Structure for Writers

The Art of Dramatic Writing

Anatomy of Story

Into the Woods

—-

(X) = corresponding tumblr post

"Do you ever just live in the moment? It's like now, what could be better than being tucked here with you?... I mean, if I died right now it would be OK."

—A Single Man (2009), dir. Tom Ford.

You're the only sunset

That I'll never forget.

Tôi đã học được một điều từ cái chết của Kizuki, và tôi tin rằng mình đã biến nó thành một phần của con người mình dưới dạng một triết thuyết: "Sự chết tồn tại, không phải như một đối nghịch mà là một phần của sự sống."

Bằng cách sống cuộc đời của mình, chúng ta đang nuôi dưỡng sự chết. Hiển nhiên như vậy, nhưng đó lại là một chân lí duy nhất mà chúng ta phải học mới biết được.

(...) không có chân lí nào có thể làm dịu được nỗi đau buồn khi chúng ta mất một người yêu dấu. Không một chân lí nào, một tấm lòng trung thực nào, một sức mạnh nào, một tấm lòng từ ái nào, có thể làm dịu được nỗi đau buồn ấy. Chúng ta chỉ có thể chịu đựng nỗi đau ấy cho đến tận cùng và cố học được một điều gì đó, nhưng bài học ấy cũng lại chẳng có ích gì nữa khi chúng ta phải đối mặt với một nỗi đau buồn mới sẽ ập đến không biết lúc nào.

Nghe tiếng sóng biển ban đêm và tiếng gió thổi ngày này qua ngày khác, tôi chỉ chăm chú đến những ý nghĩ ấy của mình. Balô trên lưng, cát vương trên tóc, tôi cứ đi mãi về phía Tây, chỉ sống bằng whisky, bánh mì và nước lã.

(Rừng Nauy–Haruki Murakami)

I tried.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019, dir. Quentin Tarantino) // Look Back (2021, created by Tatsuki Fujimoto)