Filmmaker, author, teacher: www.whitecitycinema.com
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Waiting for the Light to Change 2022
The highest compliment I can possibly pay this quiet and beautiful character study? It’s the best movie ever made about Chicagoans vacationing at a lakeside cabin in Michigan.
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Bob Dylan: Shadow Kingdom 2021
When SHADOW KINGDOM premiered on Veeps.com in the summer of 2021, some called it a “livestream event” while others referred to it as a “concert film.” Personally, I think of it as a “visual album” — not unlike Beyoncé’s LEMONADE as directed by Straub/Huillet.
Popular reviews
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Like Someone in Love 2012
The late Chilean director Raul Ruiz’s indispensable book Poetics of Cinema argues against the necessity of “central conflict theory” that has long dominated commercial narrative filmmaking in the western world. If Abbas Kiarostami, one of the world’s greatest living directors, ever wrote a comparable book on film theory, one suspects he might similarly challenge the notion of the “three-act structure.” The Japanese-set Like Someone in Love may well be the Iranian master’s most provocative work; his extremely unconventional handling of…
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A Ghost Story 2017
The scene in which Will Oldham’s character delivers a long-winded monologue about how nothing lasts forever may be the worst scene in cinema’s history. My personal idea of hell is being forced to watch that on a loop with my eyes pried open, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE-style. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
