Criticism

“Watching this film, I was reminded of Janet Manley’s essay, ‘Let the Kids Get Weird,’ in which she argues that children’s stories are rarely for, or even actually about, children. Instead, they are secretly for adults. Although she frames this issue in relation to children’s picture books, this trend is endemic across modern films: everything from children’s animation like Coco (2017), which sidelines the tweenage protagonist Miguel to the bond between his grandfather and great grandmother, to arthouse fare like 20,000 Species of Bees (2023), which spends more of its energy on a mother’s reluctance to accept her transgender daughter’s identity than on the daughter herself. Even Petite Maman (2021), a film explicitly about the way adults overlook and essentialise the emotions of children in favour of their own, cannot help but recall this same pattern.”

Cinematic Writing

for So Textual (paywalled)

“There are common pitfalls in cinematically presenting any creative art—choppily editing a dance sequence, reducing the immense trial and error of creating visual art to montage—but no practice is more prone to depictions that are schmaltzy, incompetent, or thuddingly literal than writing. There are many films about writing; there are few good films about writing. Perhaps this is because writers are often incapable of explaining how inspiration comes to them. Or perhaps it is because when inspiration comes it does so gradually, lacking a dramatic moment that plays well on screen. Or perhaps still it is because the writing process is, by its very nature, uncinematic. Listed here are five films that locate and successfully depict emotional and creative truths about writing.”

Kate Bush, Medieval Dreamer

for So Textual (paywalled)

“First, the droning—soft and constant, otherworldly. Next the drum-beat, dense and mumming; it sounds like thunder, it sounds like a heartbeat. Finally, the synth riff, clouds rolling across faraway hills. So begins ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’, the opening track of Kate Bush’s 1985 album, The Hounds of Love. A song that sounds like a dream; an album that sounds astral.”

“Tarantino and Wright’s retreats into the ’60s are easy to diagnose: both have worldviews riddled with shortcomings, and their careers have become defined by the debate and criticism surrounding those shortcomings. What better way to shift discussions away from your troubling depictions of violence against women and your casually racist writing than to make a film set in an era where such behaviour might be regarded as commonplace? Mitchell, by contrast, doesn’t have a worldview in need of reframing. While he benefits from the same privilege, he has proven himself capable of criticising it in the past. In fact, all his novels—even the ones that dabble in dystopia, like Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks—are united by their consistent effort to centre historically disempowered subjects. This progressive vein runs through his novels: things are better than they used to be, and they must get better still. In many ways the ’60s should be the setting that elucidates the most precise version of this thesis—the ‘cultural innocence’ Tarantino zeroed in on can just as easily be understood as ‘cultural hope.’”

“Shinji has always been something of a cipher for Anno — his self-loathing, misery, anxiety, and depression. Since 1995, Anno has been trapped with Shinji, and we have been trapped with them, along for the ride through redux after redux, a second go at an ending, a second go at telling the story entirely. Thrice Upon a Time draws from every iteration of Evangelion and folds them together (validating a few theories about what the rebuild series is to the overall continuity along the way), creating a new ending out of the pieces of the first two. The abstraction of the first and the grim violence of the second are remixed into a film that makes more room for both. There’s spades of philosophising, the kind that defines the franchise, but it never comes at the expense of the action, which matches the escalating scale with a sense of desperation. At times there is an overreliance on CGI, but for the most part, battles feel tangible in a way that blockbusters with gargantuan stakes usually don’t.”

“Your ability to buy into Psycho Goreman rests largely on your willingness to accept the philosophy driving every creative choice in the film, someone asking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” Wouldn’t it be cool if, while digging a hole to bury your brother alive in, you discovered a glowing alien gem? Wouldn’t it be cool if that gem summons, and allows the wearer to control, a psychopathic world-destroying creature who calls himself “The Archduke of Nightmares” (Matthew Ninaber)? And wouldn’t it be cool if The Archduke of Nightmares — renamed Psycho Goreman by Mimi: “It’s fun, it’s hip, it’s now, it’s wow” — was the veteran of a millennia-old rebellion against a tyrannical cyborg-race, led by a dictator named Pandora (Kristen MacCulloch), and that by awakening him, Mimi and Luke have brought that conflict to Earth?”

“Every episode has the same title ‘Right Here, Right Now’. On one level, the title can be read as indicative of the brand of adolescence the show is trying to portray — reckless and carefree, dedicated to the pursuit of the moment. From a queer point of view, however, the title takes on a different meaning. ‘Right Here, Right Now’ describes Fraser and Harper perfectly. They are both in transitory states, caught between the person they thought they were and the person they might be becoming, with no support or guidance available save for what little they find in each other.

Throughout the series, their dynamic oscillates between modes — platonic and sexual, amatory and selfless — without committing to any. What they have is all those things; what they have is none of those things. It is, in the truest sense of the word, queer.”

“Stop Making Sense cemented Byrne’s persona as an embodiment of anxiety; American Utopia actively deconstructs it. The structure of the show follows the same basic formula laid out in “Once in a Lifetime”, oscillating between isolated and communal. Sometimes Byrne, and the eleven other performers who make up the troupe, are separated through lighting techniques, which cast massive shadows across the stage, visually distancing them. Other times full stage lighting is up, and the troupe performs as a unit. But like “Once in a Lifetime”, while the show shifts between the two, it always resets to communal; connected is the default state.”

“Throughout Tenet a verbal code, ‘we live in a twilight world’, is refrained. Narratively it propels the plot forward. “Thematically it operates as Nolan’s driving idea: that the late-stage capitalism displayed throughout the film leads directly to extinction. Sator’s plan is Christopher Nolan’s portrayal of where an unregulated billionaire-class leads.

If the verbal code spells out the problem, its counterpoint presents something akin to a solution: ‘And there are no friends at dusk’. This is the weaponisation of the ideology that drives capitalism, turning the ‘greed is good’ mantra back upon those that benefit most from it and allowing us to look beyond the altruistic shell-game to locate the malicious intent within. In an apparent moment of growth, Nolan declares that there are no ‘good billionaires’ – especially not those who ask for your trust.”

“As anarchy is to punk, and authenticity is to rock, so is poptimism to pop.

A movement, ideology, and critical framework rolled into one, poptimism is the criteria with which pop music is evaluated, and the lens used to go about that evaluation. It places a premium on personality, measuring the quality of an artist’s output against how openly they self-narrativise, and if they do so with intelligence and wit. Operating on two fronts, poptimism asks music critics to approach pop with the same latitude they do ‘serious’ genres like rock, and audiences to mythologise its stars like they would Elliott Smith or David Bowie.”