Film Studies Resources: October 18, 2022

This hasn't been updated from last year, kind of crunched for time, but hopefully it can still provide some unique suggestions for your October film viewing: Halloween 2021: 21st Century Film Recommendations

Amplas, John, et al. "Dawn of the Dead (1978)." The Projection Booth #591 (October 13, 2022) ["We’re continuing #Shocktober2022 with an episode on George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead Released in 1978, the film is a stalwart of the zombie film pantheon. Ostensibly picking up after the events of Night of the Living Dead, the film stars Gaylen Ross as Francine, one of a handful of people trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. She and the others find refuge in a mall where they rebuild a facsimile of contemporary American society. Father Malone (Dark Destinations) and Jamie Russell (Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema) join Mike to discuss the film. Interviews feature Gaylen Ross, John Amplas, and Jon Towlson (author of the Devils Advocates book on Dawn of the Dead)."]

Complex, Valerie. "Stanning the Ancients." Letterboxd (June 20, 2020) ["Valerie Complex probes the intersection of Greco-Roman mythology and queer experience in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Neon Demon, Jumbo and Midsommar."] 

Hammond, Caleb. "Park Chan-wook on Decision to Leave, Methodical Directing, and Not Being a Film Buff." The Film Stage (October 18, 2022) 

Herrmann, Nick. "The enduring atmosphere of Road to Perdition." Little White Lies (September 20, 2022) ["Two decades on from its release, Sam Mendes' mob thriller exudes a powerful sense of dread."]

Hudson, David. "Claire Denis’s Stars at Noon." Current (October 12, 2022) 

"John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy: The Thing - Prince of Darkness - Mouth of Madness." Horror Vanguard (October 4, 2022)

Kuersten, Erich. "It's Called Scissoring: In Fabric." Acidemic (September 14, 2022) ["That's why it comes as no surprise that Strickland's In Fabric (2018), wiggles that stream of consciousness into three different streams, hoping one at least will hit the mark. We get: (a) a dark 70s-set period piece surrealist dystopian satire of England's Tony Richardson-style 'kitchen sink' (i.e. working class yabbo) character dramas; (b) a high-fashion updated or Tales of Manhattan-cum-decadent-capitalist horror satire equating fashion retail with kinky sex and black magic, and c) a work of détourned experimentalist fashion decollage, exploring the way the concept of "objectification" refuses to hold still and have its picture taken. In short, rather than leaning on Franco, Kümel, and Rollin, you can feel influences from Antonioni (modernist alienation), Bunuel (surreal deadpan satire), Argento (wild vivid colors and sudden violence you can feel in your nervous system like a cold shock), Fulci (gore as high art), Gilliam (dystopia!) and Kubrick (glacial gliding) all coalescing around a kind of Stan Brakhage / Tony Richardson collaboration for a Situationist detourned Sears catalogue from the mid-70s. Sure, technically it's about a red dress that kills its owners, sold by a Satanic department store, in an outskirt of 70s London. But that's like saying Psycho is about the difficulties of juggling a failing business with caregiving for an invalid parent."]

Persons, Dan. "Prey Knows That Sometimes an Alien Invader Is a Matter of Perspective." Tor (October 12, 2022)

Taylor, Alison and John Edmond. "This Is Not A Ritual: An Introduction to Lucile Hadžihalilović." Senses of Cinema #102 (August 2022) ["Lucile Hadžihalilović’s films have the structure of allegories. Time after time they are described in terms of surrealism and symbolism, fairy tales, and the shaping of childhood; all rich frameworks for the provision and searching of meaning. Whether with her debut medium-length La bouche de Jean-Pierre (1996), her breakthrough Innocence (2004), its midnight mirror Evolution (2015) or her latest Earwig (2021), Hadžihalilović creates models of nature that appear as simultaneously potential models of society and as cloistered worlds, beholden to their own mysterious logic. These films, when summarised read as fantasy, horror or science fiction, which they are, but when experienced, are slow sensuous works attentive to colour and texture and whose minimalist approach avoids guiding the viewer to specific interpretations and instead allows them to find their own path."]