2018 Ranked

The only thing that becomes certain when watching director John Cameron Mitchell‘s How to Talk to Girls at Parties is that this will be an incredibly divisive film. As its reception at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival suggested, this was not a film that will easily please an audience nor is it one that accomplishes every one of its goals. Mitchell strives to create a film that is as punk as its characters would want, leading How to…

NOTE: This excerpt is the introductory section of an essay I wrote for Cineccentric, entitled "David Cronenberg and the Political Underground". Read the full piece here.

When one watches a film from director David Cronenberg, it is always a unique experience. A true auteur, Cronenberg’s stamp on a film is hard to miss with his always shocking, violent, and imaginative films messing with a viewer’s mind in ways that few films can. From parasites and sex zombies meeting in a…

20 Films x 5 Decades: 1970s

A classic from director Franklin J. Schaffner, Papillon was based on the fact-maybe-fiction story from Henri Charriere about his time in the French penal colony in French Guyana. Starring Steve McQueen as Charriere - though nicknamed “Papillon” due to his butterfly tattoo - the film largely shows him trying to break out of the various prison setups maintained by the French before he is finally successful. Along the way, he forges a bond with…

20 Films x 5 Decades: 1930s

Re-teaming Marlene Dietrich with Gary Cooper six years after Morocco, Frank Borzage’s Desire once again has the pair traveling the world. An American engineer, Tom Bradley (Cooper), finally gets a two-week vacation and uses it to travel to Spain with a brief stop in Paris beforehand. While he is in Paris, he winds up running into - literally - Madeleine (Dietrich) who is in the midst of a job. Tricking a jeweler and a…

2011 Ranked

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. When I saw Drive for the first time in 2013, I had just finished my first film class in high school and was set to graduate from high school in a few weeks. Now, a week and a half removed from finishing college a semester early, it was time to atone for the sins of my youth. Unacquainted with good films at the time aside from the ones I saw in…