Zach Vasquez The Loser Canon: Why We Need More Movies About Bums, Deadbeats, Drifters and Barflies Apr 27th, 2021Towards a unifying theory of cinematic burnouts.
Zach Vasquez Yaphet Kotto Dies: Anatomy of an Actor in Two Death Scenes Apr 6th, 2021In memory of the brilliant character actor Yaphet Kotto, we look back at two of his onscreen deaths, and what they tell us about his considerable...
Zach Vasquez Remembering the Late-Night Cable Movie Discovery Mar 31st, 2021The VOD and streaming eras have robbed us of one of the greatest pleasures of the ‘80s and ‘90s: stumbling upon something absolutely inexplicable...
Zach Vasquez La Bella Confusione: The Cinematic Legacy of Fellini’s 8 ½ Mar 2nd, 2021How Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece became the template for a certain kind of auteur confessional.
Zach Vasquez Whole World’s Coming to an End: Generation X’s Obsession with "Lovers on the Run" Movies Feb 10th, 2021Theaters and video stores of the 1990s were awash with valentines to the open road, free love, and casual crime. A look back at some of those films,...
Zach Vasquez Uncanny Valleys, Cognitive Dissonance, and Eldritch Terror: The Documentaries of Rodney Ascher Feb 5th, 2021The documentarian’s latest, ‘A Glitch in the Matrix,’ further cements his distinctive style – and recurring areas of interest.
Zach Vasquez To Never Leave: On Goodbye, Dragon Inn and Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets Jan 20th, 2021Though separated by two decades and two languages, Tsai Ming-Liang’s 2003 drama and Bill and Turner Ross’s 2020 pseudo-documentary share an...
Zach Vasquez A Bunch of Seedy, Squalid Bastards Playing Cowboys and Indians: The Essential Spy Cinema of John le Carré Jan 4th, 2021The British novelist, who died late last year, leaves a legacy of film adaptations that jettison the girls and gizmos of Bond in favor of complex...
Zach Vasquez Biopic of the Beast: Oliver Stone’s Nixon at 25 Dec 16th, 2020Twenty-five years after its release, Oliver Stone’s biopic of the 37th president remains a towering achievement – and a testament to not judging...
Zach Vasquez JG Ballard and the Cinema of the Millennium Nov 30th, 2020With "Crash" out on Blu-ray this week from Criterion, we look back at the various attempts to translate JG Ballard's work to the screen.
Zach Vasquez It Must Run in the Family: The Cinematic Lineage of Eraserhead, The Brood, and Possession Oct 28th, 2020How three films – by David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Andrzej Zulawski – redefined genre cinema, and the films of their children continued...
Zach Vasquez Scorsese and Schrader in the Wilderness: September 1985, Revisited Sep 16th, 2020The once and future collaborators' path from 'The Last Temptation of Christ' to 'After Hours' to 'Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters' to 'The Last...
Zach Vasquez You Lose: The Sports Films of Michael Ritchie Aug 25th, 2020Director Michael Ritchie veered from character studies to commercial comedies, but throughout his filmography, the subject of sports (and a cynical...
Zach Vasquez Latinxploitation: On the Complicated History of Whitewashing and Brownface in the Movies Aug 10th, 2020 In recent weeks and months, Hollywood’s legacy of cultural appropriation and racism has come under increased scrutiny, with the latest controversy...
Zach Vasquez Get Out of this Machine: How Seventies Cinema Confronted the American Police State Jul 7th, 2020 Truffaut’s famous dictum regarding the impossibility of ever making a truly anti-war film is, usually, equally applicable to movies about...
