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Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies 2020
Never once in the 130 minutes of the documentary Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies is the words “Male Gaze” uttered. Imagine that. Coined by film critic Laura Mulvey in 1975, the term is used to explore how an art form dominated by straight men portrays women in ways objectifying rather than humanizing. You’d think such a term would be useful, even essential, when discussing the history of nudity in the movies, considering much of that history was made by bared breasts and female buns. Infuriatingly, this is just one of many shocking omissions in this smugly saucy doc....
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Midsommar 2019
“I wrote this while going through a break-up,” Ari Aster said at the special advance screening of Midsommar. “I’m better now.”
The filmmaker’s darkly humorous confession played well to the crowd at Brooklyn’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, where press and select members of the public gathered to see Aster’s hotly anticipated follow-up to his wildly praised debut, Hereditary. As the crowd chuckled at Aster’s softly spoken introduction, a mix of excitement and anxiety hung in the air. With his first film,…