BFI / Great Films from 1946 - Capsules

 I got to write about two of my all-time favourite movies - A Matter of Life and Death as well as William Wyler's postwar drama The Best Years of Our Lives - for BFI's list of the best films of 1946. Check it out here. 

BFI: Ten Essential Indie Christmas Movies

   For BFI, I wrote about ten indie Christmas movies from all over the world - to neatly slice through the sentiment of typical holiday viewing. Check it out here.

Arrow Films: Woody Allen 1979-1985 Box Set / The Purple Rose of Cairo Essay

   I was happy to contribute an essay on The Purple Rose of Cairo for Arrow's new blu-ray collection of Woody Allen's films from 1979-1985. You can order the box-set here!

BFI: Ten Essential Films Set in New Jersey

In time for the release of Jim Jarmusch's lovely new film Paterson, I wrote about ten of the best films (nine films and a TV show, actually) set in New Jersey.  Find it here at BFI. 

Canvas by Grolsch: Bruce Springsteen + His Cinematic Songs

After reading and thoroughly enjoying Springsteen's new autobiography, Born to Run, I wrote about how intrinsically cinematic The Boss' music is -- and how he writes habitable worlds into existence. Read it here, at Canvas by Grolsch. 

Roger Ebert.com / Another Look at Bob Fosse's Star 80

 
I wrote about Bob Fosse's final 1983 film - Star 80 - over at Roger Ebert.com. With its depiction of terrible, violent misogyny, it's a horror story for our times. Find it here. 

Sight & Sound Book Review: The Real James Dean

 I'm late posting this, but for October's issue of Sight & Sound I wrote a review of new book 'The Real James Dean', exploring the quirks and personality of the legendary actor. 

BFI: Ten Essential Films Set in New Mexico

For BFI, I wrote about ten great films set in New Mexico - the celluloid setting for corruption. Find it here!

Little White Lies: Pablo Trapero's The Clan / Review

I don't seem to agree with the consensus, but I found Pablo Trapero's family crime saga painfully dull. See my review for Little White Lies here. 

Little White Lies Westerns Issue // Yakima Canutt, Stuntman Extraordinaire

For Little White Lies Sep/Oct issue - all about Westerns in time for the release of The Magnificent Seven - I wrote about the original Western stuntman, silent film maverick Yakima Canutt. Pick it up here!

Roger Ebert.com / Ken Burns' The West at 20

 In my first piece for Roger Ebert.com, I wrote about the 20th anniversary of Ken Burns' PBS series The West - and his languid approach to history. Find it here!

Rocky at 40: Movies We Mis-Remember

In honour of the 1976 classic Rocky turning 40 this year, I wrote about how audiences mis-remember movies - and how our collective memories play tricks on us when it comes to beloved films. Check it out here at Canvas by Grolsch. 

Fightland: The Hollywood Gangster, The Fix, and the 'Man Mountain'

For VICE's Fightland, I wrote about a heavyweight boxer called Primo Carnera and his involvement wi

th both Hollywood and the Mafia. His crooked rise to the top included shadowy mobsters, bonafide movie stars, and Hollywood copycatting his life story for the screen. Read about him here. 

BFI / Capsule: 10 Great Films from 1976 - Brian De Palma's Carrie

For BFI, I wrote a tiny bit about Brian De Palma's Carrie in a list of great films from 1976 --   as they turn 40 this year! You can check it out here. 

Fightland / Gypsy in the Ring: The Brave Life of Johann 'Rukeli' Trollmann

I'm humbled to be able to have written about German Sinti light-heavyweight champion Johann Trollmann - and how his popularity infuriated Nazi Germany. You can read his remarkable life story over at Fightland.

BFI: Ten Great Greek Films

In time for the release of Athina Rachel Tsangari's Chevalier tomorrow, I wrote about ten of Greek cinema's gems - past and present. Read it over on the BFI website. 

TIFF.net // Male Fashion in the Gangster Movie

I wrote about how fashion is absolutely key in the gangster movie. In no genre more than the crime film, the clothes make the man. Read it here for TIFF.NET. 

TinyLetter Essay Series: Upstate Ghosts

   I've made a Tinyletter -- a newsletter you can sign up to with your email address to get updates and new bits of writing from me. You can subscribe by clicking here! I'm trying my hand at something a bit different; a narrative non-fiction essay. I'm hoping for it to be the first in a series I'll be sending out over the next few months.

The first is called 'Upstate Ghosts' - about homesickness, myths of the past, and rural upstate New York, where I grew up. You can read it in its entirety here. 

Fightland: The Boxing Movie is Making a Comeback

   For VICE's Fightland, I wrote about the new wave of upcoming boxing movies -- from Roberto Duran biopic Hands of Stone to Bleed for This, the comeback tale of middleweight champ Vinny Paz. 

Little White Lies: Great Blockbusters of the 21st Century - Roland Emmerich's 2012

As part of a really fun symposium on the greatest blockbusters of the 21st century, I wrote for Little White Lies about the immense joy Roland Emmerich's maligned, world-wrecking 2012 gives me. You can find that here, and the other great essays over here. 

Sight & Sound: Five Key - Muhammad Ali Screen Appearances

For the August issue of Sight & Sound, I wrote about five of best screen appearances of the late, great Muhammad Ali. The issue is available digitally and on newsstands from 7 July. Rest in power, champ. 

VICE Motherboard: These VR Films Let Viewers Talk to Refugees + Holocaust Survivors

I covered Sheffield Doc/Fest's Virtual/Alternate Realities programme for Motherboard. You can find what I had to say here. 

Grolsch Canvas: BBQ's, Burgers, + Beer: Classic All-American Movies

In time for the 4th of July, I wrote about some perfect All-American movies -- though I wish the list could have been longer! Find it here. 

Movie Mezzanine: Boxing, Femininity, and Anna Rose Holmer's The Fits

  I wrote about Anna Rose Holmer's debut feature The Fits, about a young girl in a boxing gym and the dance troupe down the hall who fall victim to mysterious 'fits'. Find it here.

Grolsch Canvas: The Seventh Fire Doc / An Interview with Jack Riccobono

I interviewed documentary filmmaker Jack Riccobono about his Terrence Malick-produced doc The Seventh Fire, which focuses on the gang crises on a Native American reservation. You can find our chat here. 

BFI Capsule: Hal Ashby - Five Perfect Films

For BFI, I wrote a short segment about Hal Ashby and his run of five perfect 10/10 films in the 1970's. Click here to check it out!

Fightland / VICE: The Sting of Retirement -- A Conversation with Nick Blackwell

 I had a chat to former middleweight champion boxer Nick Blackwell about his career-ending fight with Chris Eubank Jr and what the future holds for him. You can find it over at FIGHTLAND.

BFI: Preview / Sheffield Doc Fest 2016

Taking place from 10-15 June, the UK's biggest documentary festival is ongoing in Sheffield. I wrote a festival preview for BFI. 

Sight & Sound Magazine: The Neon Demon / Interview with Nicolas Winding Refn

For my first cover story in the July issue of Sight & Sound, I spoke to Nicolas Winding Refn about his new hybrid fashion-horror The Neon Demon. You can check out the issue here. 

    

Fightland / VICE: Talking to the First Woman to Ever Present a Boxing Match

  In my debut for VICE's Fightland, I profiled BoxNation broadcaster Charlie Webster, one of the only dedicated women presenters in the boxing world. We talked women in the sport, breaking into fight journalism, and the controversial Tyson Fury. You can find it all over here. 

Bechdel Test Fest / 'Girls Gotta Eat' Zine: Barbra Streisand + Female Hunger

So happy to have written for Bechdel Test Fest's first ever zine - 'Girls Gotta Eat' - on film, food, and feminism. I chose to write about Barbra Streisand and female hunger, particularly in her '70s films The Way We Were and A Star is Born.

You can find out more / purchase it for £5 here!

Masoud Yazdani Award for Excellence in Film Scholarship

I'm really pleased to announce that Film Matters Magazine and their publisher, Intellect, have awarded me the 2015 Masoud Yazdani Award for Excellence in Film Scholarship. Here's what they said:

In honor of Masoud Yazdani, Chairman of Intellect, who passed away in 2014, Film Matters recently commissioned its inaugural Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Film Scholarship.  This tribute reflects Masoud’s keen interest in and support of Film Matters and — by extension — undergraduate scholars.  This book award will now be given annually to a Film Matters author who has published a feature article during the previous volume year.  The winning author receives a book from the field of film studies, in recognition of his/her achievement.

Film Matters is very pleased to report that, following a lengthy judging process (conducted by three individual academics based at institutions of higher education worldwide), the winner of the first Yazdani Award is Christina Newland, for her FM 5.1 (2014) article, “Archetypes of the Southern Gothic: The Night of the Hunter and Killer Joe.”  Congratulations to Christina on her fine achievement, among what was an exceptionally high level of writing across the entire group of essays.

You can read more here, at the Film Matters website.

Little White Lies Magazine: The Keeping Room (Review)

For the May issue of Little White Lies, I wrote a print review of Daniel Barber's female-led Western The Keeping Room. The full review is also now online. 

The issue is currently on sale and you can find it here! 

BFI: Ten Essential Films Set in Texas

In conjunction with the release of Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!!! - set in Texas in 1980 - I wrote about ten great films set in the Lone Star state. 

BFI: Where to Begin With Psychological Westerns

For the May BFI Southbank season, I wrote a brief primer on where to start with the 'psychological' western of the fifties. Find it here at BFI. 

Louis C.K.'s Horace and Pete

Strange and superlative though it may seem, in Horace & Pete, comedian Louis C.K. may have created one of the most affecting, incisive, and tragic television series of our era.  Touching on mental illness, modern loneliness, family dysfunction, male cruelty, and Donald Trump - among other things - it seems to begin from the idea that the world is an intrinsically sad place. In it, it seems to say, we are all both victims and perpetrators. It’s a show that’s painful in the way that life is painful - blindly, with little discrimination. It follows individuals who can’t seem to get out of the hamster wheel of misfortune. 

The setting is, logically, Horace and Pete’s — a family-run Brooklyn dive bar that remains stubbornly true to its 100-year history. Everything inside is flanked with wood, and like the inside of a ship, all is burnished and dimly-lit. The walls are crowded with messy picture frames. Don’t even try to order a mixed drink or wine. Trendy Brooklyn millennials are treated with open hostility. If someone were to turn the borough on its side and shake, you’d find what came loose propping up the bar there. The patrons, at their spindly stools and chairs, are alternately loud-mouthed or morose, pontificating about politics or online dating. They float in and out of the periphery; we get insight from them occasionally, but just as often we get drunken belligerence or light comic relief. It’s much needed here.

Horace & Pete is a flag-in-the-ground statement of artistic intent. Written as a ten-episode mini-series, the show was self-funded by Louis C.K. with no network backing or set time-scale. Episodes run from 30 to 60 minutes, as the story demands. Divided into Act I and II, its structure is exquisitely pared down; almost all scenes take place in the same upstairs-downstairs setting, with maybe only two exteriors. We never even see the street front outside Horace & Pete’s establishment; it’s a world unto itself. 

As for the central character Horace (played by Louis C.K), the bar is his whole world. He views the rest of his life passively. Things just happen to him; insults and events that would wound most people bounce off him. In moments of genuine distress, he fills up like a glass of water, going strawberry red and rubbing his eyes. Horace made a reckless, selfish decision as a 21 year old, and it’s kept him estranged from his adult children. But he’s not a terrible guy, not really. He does what he can to keep the family business together; to protect his ailing brother and negotiate with his prickly sister. Life just doesn’t afford him much of a chance at normality. 

The old story of Horace & Pete’s Bar is repeated throughout the series like a mantra: ‘It was opened in 1916 by two brothers called Horace and Pete. And then they had two sons named Horace and Pete, who took it over. And then the next bunch of sons too.’ But the reality is more convoluted, and the family’s history is far from idyllic. The late Horace Sr was a monstrous domestic abuser, barely letting his wife see the light of day. His brother — Uncle Pete to us — is a terrible bully with hardly a redeeming trait. Now a doddery old man, Pete (Alan Alda) still tends bar, taking any given opportunity to humiliate his nephews. The role was originally written for Joe Pesci, and his dialogue still has Pesci’s familiar foul-mouthed cadences. 

Young Pete, on the other hand, is quieter - shuffling around and sweeping up the barroom floor. Steve Buscemi gives him a bent, rumpled appearance, with a thin-skinned translucence not dissimilar to a hard-boiled eggshell. But Buscemi’s familiar wide-set eyes have a kindness to them. It’s a once in a lifetime performance for Buscemi, who builds his character’s physicality to match his interior life. Pete’s desires are simple; he wants to live a plain, dull, even joyless existence. It’s not the absence of joy that concerns him, but the absence of sanity. Without his medication, he is certifiably insane — schizophrenic, perhaps, though no one says precisely. He’s simply content not to disappear into the fog of his own mind. 

And so slowly, through these individuals, the show chisels away at the mythology of the family-run business - a cornerstone of American entrepreneurship. It’s key to our country’s idea of itself, past and present. It’s Horace and Pete’s older sister Sylvia, played by Edie Falco with pinched, purposeful severity, who makes the point best. There should be zero nostalgia for the old watering hole. It’s merely been the home for a hundred years of downtrodden women, tortured by abusive, drunken husbands. She encourages her brothers to close the bar down and to move on with their lives, but no one seems capable of following through on that idea.

In this way, Horace & Pete continually undermines the masculine history that Uncle Pete rhapsodises about. Oddly, even Horace and Pete themselves are prone to misty-eyed fondness for an imagined version of the past. They feel a baffling loyalty to keeping the place open. If they try hard enough, perhaps, the golden fiction of family tradition might come true. 

Misery really is passed on through the generations, as Philip Larkin famously wrote. If it ‘deepens like a coastal shelf’ over the years, then watching ten episodes of Horace & Pete is watching the deepening of that misery occur; like witnessing erosion through a time-lapse lens. It’s never shied away from, never blunted for the sake of audience comfort. Some situations are sad and only become sadder.   

Does Louis C.K. see America on the same terms as he sees Horace & Pete’s? It’s possible.  But if the show is a larger statement on the current state of affairs, it’s never concisely laid out. It’s too specific to the particulars of its dysfunctional family; too in touch with human realities. Nonetheless, the bar is an outdated, isolated place in an advanced state of decay. The lost souls inside are in total denial, avoiding the sins of the past and focusing on a more noble legacy. But it’s just a story they’re telling themselves. And if they can’t reconcile themselves to the past, then what hope is there for the future? 

Somehow, it turns out that Paul Simon was enlisted to write a short, melancholy ballad for the show’s theme music. It bookends each episode, and and strains of it pop up mid-way through, too. The gentle insistence of its tune becomes inextricable from the action onscreen. By the conclusion, its plaintive sound is enough to bring a lump to your throat. 

The final episodes of Horace & Pete are almost unbearably sad. The narrative is saved from mean-spiritedness only because it loves its characters, in all their fucked-up, unlikable complexity. The events almost feel preordained; there’s a tragic necessity to them. It could only ever have ended this way, but the audience will undoubtedly wish for a million other ways. And keep wishing long after the series is complete. Horace & Pete will stay imprinted on my memory. Its small gestures, its painful intimacy, its vulgar jokes — the way Horace rubs his eyes and Pete shuffles along the floor. There’s nothing disposable about what it offers; it keeps percolating around my head. I’ll carry it around with me for a long time -- and I can’t think of a higher compliment for a work of art. 

Little White Lies: How Shane Captured the Shifting Mood of Postwar America

I wrote something in praise of one of America's greatest westerns - George Stevens' Shane - over at Little White Lies. Read it here.

Review: The Jungle Book

It could never have been an easy proposition to remake The Jungle Book - even with the enormous resources that Disney has at its disposal. The 1967 animated feature - an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s novel - is a precious memory for so many. 

Mowgli the man-cub - played by the adorably scruffy Neel Sethi - has only ever known the animal world. Left in peril as a toddler alone in the jungle, he is rescued by wise panther Bagsheera (Ben Kingsley). Although Mowgli has literally been raised by wolves, he can’t help but to use human ‘tricks’ — a water bowl, levers and pulleys - that make him different from the rest.

The boy gains a vicious nemesis in the war-scarred tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba), who hates humans and wants the boy killed at all costs. Forced to leave his wolf pack behind, Mowgli must face the deep, dark heart of the jungle and all its inhabitants — but not without help from his animal friends. 

Director Jon Favreau does a stellar job of restoring the fable for a new generation of children, offering little in the way of radical alteration of the material. There has been a rethinking of the original music - in this iteration, it is mostly subsumed by the plot. But certain beloved songs do sneak their way in, and Favreau’s restraint with them make those moments all the more enjoyable.

Other changes mostly concern Kipling's very 19th century meaning of ‘civilisation’ or the ‘natural order’. In 2016, Favreau seems to tell us, ’the natural order’ is to be loyal to your family and friends — even if they are wolves, a panther and a bear. Mankind be damned. 

The CGI is photo-realistic enough to pass for wildlife documentary; each animal is beautifully rendered. Care is taken in capturing a tiger’s loping movement or a wolf’s ears as they flatten with fear. But of course, this is Disney; the animals are anthropomorphic. Monkeys grow to three times their normal size, crocodiles make peace during droughts, and tiny green frogs, evidently fed up with the weather, wipe rainwater off their heads. The jungle too, with all its verdancy and vastness, has a hyperbolic effect. The setting is nudged ever so slightly into exaggeration -  as it can only be in storybook imagination. 

The King Louis scene deserves a special mention —  offering perhaps the film’s only gag for adults. The monkey king, voiced by Christopher Walken and obscured by shadows in temple ruins, blatantly invokes — of all things - Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. This is a rarity, though. Most of the film seems too pure for that kind of in-joke. 

Ultimately, it’s this affection for the material that makes The Jungle Book so lovable. Baby Mowgli introduces himself to Bagsheera by pulling on his mouth and stroking his velvety nose, sweetly unaware of the potential danger. Forest animals scatter for cover while Baloo, (wonderfully voiced by Bill Murray) and Mowgli croon ‘Bare Necessities’ together. 

The spirited, brave little Mowgli and his story wave the flag for loyalty, friendship, and adventure — values we can all  get behind. But maybe the best thing to say about The Jungle Book is that it evokes a genuinely child-like sense of wonder. For a film like this one, there’s no greater compliment. 

Now showing at Nottingham Cineworld. 

BFI: Where to Begin With Luchino Visconti

I wrote about one of my all-time favourite directors, the great Luchino Visconti -- and how to brush up on him if you're a newcomer to his work. Have a look over at the BFI. 

Canvas by Grolsch: Interview with 'High Rise' Director Ben Wheatley

[Photo credit to Charles Newland]

I had a brief chat with director Ben Wheatley in anticipation of the release of his film High Rise tomorrow. Have a look here!

VICE: The Truth about the Tyrannical Hollywood 'Fixer' Who Inspired Hail, Caesar!

  I wrote about the real Eddie Mannix, played by Josh Brolin in the Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar! Spoiler alert: he was not a nice person. Read about some of Hollywood's darkest secrets over at VICE. 

Rupert Pupkin Speaks: Five Classic Film Discoveries from 2015

I was asked to a guest post over at great obscure and classic cinema blog Rupert Pupkin Speaks. I had to pick five of the best older films that I'd newly discovered last year. You can find my list here! 

Sight & Sound: Lost + Found Column / Looking for Mr. Goodbar

I'm very proud to say I've written the Lost + Found column in April's issue of Sight & Sound Magazine. I wrote about forgotten seventies film Looking for Mr. Goodbar and its attitude toward women's liberation. The film stars Diane Keaton and Richard Gere. Pick it up on newsstands now!