Thursday, October 27, 2022

Film Studies/Film Culture (Concepts and Theories)

[I have 100s of individual archives on films, if you would like to explore in-depth critiques/analysis of  individual films, start here: Archives of Individual Films and Archives of the films, by decade, that do not have an individual post]

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Accented Cinema. "How Tony Leung Acts With His Eyes." (Posted on Youtube: August 12, 2021) ["It's truly a shame that Tony Leung isn't more popular in the mainstream western audience. It's not everyday you get an actor who's both an acting legend, and a sex icon. Today, I want to take a brief look at some of Tony Leung's starring roles, and help you appreciate his craft of acting."]

Acidemic [The film criticism blog of Erich Kuersten. Has a focus on the wild & surreal. Essential: The CinemArchetypes links on the right hand side.]

Acolytes of Horror. "Annihilation: Surrendering to Creation." (Posted on Youtube: November 21, 2020)

---. "Misery: Monsters Aren't Always Mysterious." (Posted on Youtube: October 31, 2016)

---. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Soundscape of Sally's Screams." (Posted on Youtube: November 2, 2019)

Adam Nayman (Toronto-based, writes for The Ringer and Cinema, and teaches Cinema Studies at University of Toronto and Ryerson University)

"A Guide to Samurais and Cowboys." Metrograph (2023) ["The samurai and the cowboy—each towering icons of their respective “national” cinemas, the Japanese chambara, and the American Western—are frequently compared, both being elite fighting heroes who roam across a lawless landscape where violence and villainy run rampant, guided by a personal code that must be upheld at all costs. The two genres were born out of vastly different cultural contexts, and each has its own discrete iconography, most notably the samurai’s swords swords (daisho) and the Westerner’s six-shooter. Looking past surface differences, however, we can see two genres both concerned with principled warriors who frequently find themselves facing off against corrupt enemies in steely showdowns, confronting their own inner demons along the way. Like their Chinese counterparts in wuxia films—period-set martial arts movies depicting high-flown feats of derring-do, many of these influenced from the chambara—these warriors are resolute in purpose and indifferent to pain. They are willing (in theory, at least) to sacrifice their own lives to fulfil their duty with honor intact."]

Ajram, Sofia. "Monstrum Montreal Time-Loop Lecture." Personal Website (November 2019) [On the Time-Loop genre through the films of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead.]

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists ["The Alliance of Women Film Journalists, Inc. (AWFJ), was founded in 2006 by Jennifer Merin, Maitland McDonagh, Joanna Langfield and Jenny Halper. We were incorporated as a not-for-profit charitable organization in New York State in October, 2006. Our members are highly qualified professional female movie critics, reporters and feature writers working in print, broadcast and online media. Members are required to meet AWFJ membership criteria. Our purpose is to amplify the voices of women critics, provide a platform for the expression of women’s perspectives on film and support work by and about women – both in front of and behind the cameras – through intra-group promotional activities, outreach programs and by presenting the annual EDA Awards in recognition of outstanding accomplishments (the best and worst) by and about women in the movies."]

American Cinematographer [American Society of Cinematographers and American Cinematographer website.]

American Nightmare (USA: Adam Simon, 2000: 71 mins) [Amy Lynn on Amazon: "This is a documentary about horror films and their impact on the world between 1968-1979. We get to hear the points of views of the directors of some of the most frightening classic horror films ever made. ... Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, John Landis, Wes Craven, George Romero and more. We get an in depth look at the politics and upheaval of the 60's and 70's and how they influenced ... the horror genre..."]

Angelica Jade Bastién. [Chicago based critic, self described on her twitter profile: "critic,
@vulture. madwoman. southern broad. one hell of a dame. she/her."]

Animus [London: "Animus is a magazine with a specific idea of what cinema could and should be, one that is rooted in an engagement with cinema as an art of form, ideas, and imagination — therefore as an art which, while building on its past and in a state of constant becoming, is always turned towards the future. As long as it can be imagined, cinema will never end." - Elena Laszic."]

Another Gaze [Feminist film journal founded in 2016]

Any-Mation. "Hayao Miyazaki: The Mind of a Master." (Posted on Youtube: July 16, 2020)

Apocalypse Now [Doylestown, PA: Scout Tafoya's film criticism website.]

"Archives of Resources for Individual Films."  Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Online Archive) [This is where you can find information on 100s of individual films.] 

Artforum: Film [Film criticism from the art publication]

Artifice  [Stockholm, Sweden: "The Artifice is an online magazine that covers a wide spectrum of art forms. It operates independently with the writers collaboratively building and maintaining the platform. Instead of recycling the same entertainment news stories or publishing commonplace editorials, The Artifice focuses on unique topics that are intellectually stimulating and meaningful."]

"A Serious Man." Fifteen Minute Film Fanatics (November 17, 2024) ["A Serious Man (2009) may seem much different from the Coens’ adaptation of No Country for Old Men, which they released two years earlier. But they both concern a likable man who finds himself posing questions that the universe–or any of its wisest men–cannot answer. And even if there are glimpses of answers to the question “What does Hashem, or God, want,” neither late-thirties Larry or late-sixties Sheriff Bell can read the writing on the wall (or, in the case of A Serious Man, the writing on the teeth). The film begins with a quotation from Rumi, “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” Join us for a conversation about one of the Coens’ best films and a terrific look at people to whom things happen and are forced to receive the will of a God who never tips His hand about His intentions."]

A.S. Hamrah [Brooklyn film critic and writer for The Baffler]

Aviv, Rachel. "Did the Oscar-Winning Director Asghar Farhadi Steal Ideas?" The New Yorker (November 7, 2022) ["At a dangerous moment in Iran, the filmmaker stands accused by one of his former students."]

Azevedo, Luis. "In the Kitchen with Pedro Almodóvar." (Posted on Youtube: March 10, 2020) 

---. "The Sensual World of Claire Denis." Little White Lies (April 15, 2019) ["Filtering the cinematic landscape of this master filmmaker through the five senses."]

Balanzategui, Jessica. "Great Actors: Nicolas Cage." Senses of Cinema #100 (January 2022)

Banks, Joe. "New Hollywood Vs Mutant Cinema: The Flipside Of US Cinema, 1960s–80s." The Quietus (October 23, 2022) ["Just as the critical battlefield of music fandom is littered with the still twitching corpses of ‘classic albums you must hear before you die’, so too is cinema afflicted with the same tendency towards compiling ‘greatest films of all time’ lists. Of course, it’s only natural to want to call out brilliant movies and flag them for future generations – the big problem is when this leads to an oppressive orthodoxy, where not only are the same films continually lauded, but the way in which they’re interpreted also becomes set in stone. A case in point is how American cinema from the late 60s into the 80s has become lionised as the zenith of western filmmaking, with the ‘New Hollywood’ wave of directors – Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, etc. – responsible for both Oscar magnets, such as The Godfather, American Graffiti and Taxi Driver, and blockbuster event movies, such as Jaws and Star Wars. But as new book We Are The Mutants – The Battle For Hollywood from Rosemary’s Baby to Lethal Weapon argues, the dominance of this narrative tends to overshadow the importance of a rich seam of often independent films coming out of America at the same time, many of which have just as much – if not more – to say about the psychic mood of the US during this tumultuous period of its history."]

Baughan, Nikki. "Pleasures and pains of the flesh: women, physical autonomy and the New French Extremity." British Film Institute (May 17, 2022) ["The objectification of women, particularly under the banners of sex and violence, is nothing new in cinema. We have long watched women suffer, sob and scream, turned to ciphers for quivering victimhood through the reductive force of the male gaze. But women as the perpetrators of violence, to others or themselves? Women driven to the extremes of behaviour by desire, madness, revenge – hell, even unadulterated kicks? That’s still so uncommon as to be exhilarating."]

BBC News. "George Orwell's 1984: Why It Still Matters." (Posted on Youtube: June 10, 2019)

Benedict, Steven. "Analysis of Blade Runner." (Posted on Vimeo: 2012)

---. "Analysis of Inception." (Posted on Vimeo: 2012)

---. "Coen Country." (Posted on Vimeo: February 5, 2015)


Benton, Michael Dean. "The Power of Stories." Who Are We? (February 5, 2023) ["Michael and I explore the power of stories. Michael Benton is an associate professor of humanities and film studies at Bluegrass Community and Technical College in Lexington, Ky. Narrative Psychology focuses on how we perceive the events of our lives through stories. One of the most powerful ways we can experience transformation is by changing our stories. This can be done in many ways."]

---. "The Role of the Film Experience in Embodied Writing." Sensing, Moving, Thinking & Writing. Kendall Hunt, 2015: 61 - 89. [I have a PDF of this, if you are interested - just ask.]

Nicole Berenz, "Political Cinema Today – The New Exigencies: For a Republic of Images." Screening the Past (September 2013) ["World Cinema’, to a French eye, is a very welcoming notion that could mean several different, even contradictory things. Among these, I will evoke three meanings: 1) Because of its predecessor World Music, which means the ethnic music re-arranged with electronic instruments to please Western consumers, World Cinema could function as a seductive formula for acculturation – after exploiting gold, diamond and every other kind of material resource, now the Western world is exploiting the immaterial patrimony of the rest of the world, including, of course, its own inner colonies. 2) In a much more objective, generous sense, World Cinema can mean ‘every kind of cinema that appears in the world’ – as Philippe Grandrieux might have put it, according to his historical TV experiment of 1987, The World is Everything That Happens (“le Monde est tout ce qui arrive”). The syntagm World Cinema helps to identify and evaluate non-dominant cinemas all over the planet. This is the opposite of the previous meaning: World Cinema as opposed to globalised cinema, with a hidden but obvious ‘s’ at the end of Cinema. 3) In a polemical and radical sense – conceptual rather than geographical – World Cinema means the cinema in relationship to the world, cinema in its ability to conceive and reshape the world, as opposed to the ‘fantasy cinema’ that forgets, often hides and sometimes betrays realities."]

Bernstein, Arielle and Nelson Carvajal. "The Inherent Vice in Paul Thomas Anderson's Films: A Video Essay." Press Play (January 2, 2015)

Beyl, Cameron. "Christopher Nolan [5.1] – The Non-Linear Neo-Noirs." The Director Series (February 13, 2017)




---. "Christopher Nolan: The Dark Knight." (Posted on Youtube: April 28, 2020)

---. "Christopher Nolan: The Dark Knight Rises and the Apocalyptic Epics." (Posted on Youtube: November 28, 2017)

---. "The Coen Brothers [4.1]: Murder and Mayhem." The Directors Series (May 24, 2016)

---. "The Coen Brothers [4.2]: The Postmodern Pictures." The Directors Series (June 14, 2016)

---. "The Coen Brothers [4.3]: The Breakout Classics." The Directors Series (June 28, 2016)

---. "The Coen Brothers [4.4]: An Odyssey Into Style." The Directors Series (July 12, 2016)




---. "The Directors Series: David Fincher, Pts 1-4." (Archived on Open Culture: September 10, 2015)

---. "The Director Series: David Fincher, Pt. 5 - The Bleeding Edge." (Posted on Vimeo: 2015)

---. "Paul Thomas Anderson, Pt. 1: The Sundance Kid." (Posted on Vimeo: January 2016)

---. "Paul Thomas Anderson, Pt. 2: The California Chronicles." (Posted on Vimeo: January 2016)

---. "Paul Thomas Anderson, Pt. 3: The Concept Comedies." (Posted on Vimeo: January 2016)


---. "Paul Thomas Anderson Pt. 5: The Surf Noirs." (Posted on Vimeo: 2016)

---. "Paul Thomas Anderson, Pt. 6: Altered States." (Posted on Vimeo: 2019)

---. "Paul Thomas Anderson Pt. 7: Passion and Poison." (Posted on Vimeo: 2019)

---. "The Directors Series: Stanley Kubrick, Pts. 1-5." (Posted on Vimeo: February 5, 2016)

Beyond the Screenplay [Podcast: “Lessons from the Screenplay” creator Michael Tucker and the LFTS team do deeper dives into the storytelling of individual movies and chat with the creatives behind those films."]

Bird, Katie. "Feeling and Thought as They Take Form: Early Steadicam, Labor, and Technology (1974-1985)." Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies 7.1 (2020)

Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist The Video Essay Podcast (August 21, 2020) 

Bluegrass Film Society (Facebook Group - you are welcome to join)

Bogutskaya, Ann, Sophie Monks Kaufman, and Mary Wild. "House of Psychotic Women 01 - Introduction."  The Final Girls 5.1 (October 21, 2022)  ["A new mini-series dedicated to the influential book by Kier-la Janisse, House of Psychotic Women. In this first episode, a conversation between writer Sophie Monks Kaufman and lecturer and podcaster Mary Wild about discovering the book, the cinephile memoir, and what makes it, even ten years on, such a peerless piece of work."]

Bolin, Garrett. "Queer Becomings: A Visual Essay on Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine." (Posted on Vimeo: 2015)

Bordwell, David. "Constructive Editing in Robert Bresson's Pickpocket." (Posted on Vimeo: 2013)

---. "How Motion Pictures Became the Movies 1908-1920." (Posted on Vimeo: 2013)

Bouvé, Andrew. "The Many Voices of Meryl Streep." Slate (February 28, 2014)

Boyer, Lanny. "Paul Thomas Anderson: Four Basics." (Posted on Youtube: October 19, 2015)

Bright Lights Film Journal [East Coast auteurist critics.]

Broeren, Joost and Sander Spies. "Cutting the Edge: Freedom in Framing." Filmkrant (Posted on Vimeo: 2016)

Brooke, John T. "Full Metal Jacket Video Essay." (Posted on Youtube: January 10, 2016) ["Director Stanley Kubrick rips the skin from the face of war to expose the dehumanizing effect of the military on the people fed to its emotional meat grinder in Full Metal Jacket. Through the eyes of an 18-year-old recruit--from his first days in the seeming hell of Marine Corps boot camp as his superiors try to strip of him his individuality and re-create him as a Marine, to the hell of the 1968 Tet offensive, Kubrick reveals the damage done to the collective human soul by the inhumanity of war. Based on the novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford."]

Brubaker, Philip. "The Childhood Whimsy of Wes Anderson." (Posted on Vimeo: 2018) ["In honor of Wes Anderson's birthday today, take a closer look at how his iconic visual style of filmmaking and storytelling depict the whimsy of childhood."]

S

Cairns, David. "PlayTime: Anatomy of a Gag." Criterion Collection (Posted on Vimeo: November 2014)

Caligari [Los Angeles: "A periodical of cinema, arts, and letters."]

Caméra Stylo [University of Toronto: "Our goal is to curate a selection of exemplary undergraduate student work that contributes to the study of cinema and visual media, and encourage a variety of academic submissions in the form of either visual or text-based argument."]

Carr, Jeremy. "Notebook Primer: Film Noir." Notebook (Aug 27, 2020) ["Film noir revels in a realm of desperation, despair, and dread, engineering an entertaining and engaging descent into humanity’s dark side."]

---. "Notebook Primer: Ida Lupino." Notebook (July 30, 2020) ["As an actress, writer, producer, and director, Ida Lupino was a revolutionary female filmmaker and a forerunner of independent cinema."]

---. "Notebook Primer: Sergei Eisenstein." Notebook (August 13, 2020) ["A hugely influential filmmaker and theorist, Sergei Eisenstein epitomized the uneasy, if often dynamic, synthesis of art and politics."]

---. "Notebook Primer: Werner Herzog." Notebook (July 2, 2020) ["Becoming something of an existential philosopher in the process, Herzog’s career-long presentation of a mysterious, multifaceted world is an overwhelming collective exhibition. While he is not religious, his films — transcendent meditations on faith, superstition, and sublime experience — have a pronounced spiritual constitution. He finds humanity within pure chaos and mysticism in the ostensibly banal. Perhaps more than anything, however, Herzog is driven by an unceasing search for new visual encounters. As he notes when discussing the enigmatic mirages of Fata Morgana (1971), he remains occupied by a “quest for images that you haven’t really seen yet,” and, he affirms, “I’ve not stopped searching.”]

---. "Notebook Primer: The Western." Notebook (July 16, 2020) ["The Western is a compendium of cultural dichotomies and iconic symbols, locations, and characters, with countless variations."]

Carvajal, Nelson. "The Inherent Vice in Paul Thomas Anderson's Films." (Posted on Vimeo: 2015)

---. "Isolated Female Figures: The Films of Todd Haynes." (Posted on Vimeo: 2015)

---. "Wake Up: Spike Lee’s Vital Chi-Raq.” (Posted on Vimeo: March 31, 2016)

Catley, Anna. "Wes Anderson & Yasujiro Ozu: A Visual Essay." (Posted on Youtube: March 30, 2015)

Ceplair, Larry. "The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later (University Press of Kentucky, 2022)." New Books in Film (October 26, 2022) ["Seventy-five years ago, the Hollywood blacklist ruined lives, stifled creativity, and sent waves of proscription and censorship throughout United States culture. When the Hollywood Ten refused to answer the questions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities about their membership in the Communist Party, they were sentenced to prison, the five who were under contract were fired by their studios, and all were blacklisted from reemployment until they "purged themselves of their communist taint." By the 1950s, this blacklist publicly stigmatized nearly three hundred other Americans in the entertainment industry who invoked the First and Fifth Amendments in their refusal to apologize for their Communist ties or provide the names of other members. Dozens of others were graylisted as the result of rumors. In The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later (University Press of Kentucky, 2022), Larry Ceplair offers new insights on the origins of the blacklist, the characteristics of those blacklisted, and the probability of future proscriptions of the blacklist type."]

Changing Reels ["Changing Reels is a bi-weekly podcast that celebrates diversity and representation in cinema. In each episode, host Courtney Small and a guest take a deep dive into a film and discuss its cultural significance."]

Cheney, Matthew. "Dead Men and Ghosts, Limited." (Posted on Vimeo: 2014)


---. "Total Cinema: Snowpiercer." (Posted on Vimeo: 2014)


Cinebeats [Kimberly Lindberg's film criticism website.]

Cine-Cast [Chicago podcast hosted by Ben Sachs, et al]

Cinefix. "Alien Chestburster: Art of the Scene." (Posted on Youtube: January 21, 2015)

The Cinema Cartography. "The Aesthetic of Evil." (Posted on Youtube: January 4, 2021)

---. "Andrei Tarkovsky - Poetic Harmony." (Posted on Youtube: April 29, 2016)

---. "The Andrei Tarkovsky Retrospective." (Posted on Youtube: April 3, 2020)

---. "Apocalypse Now: Analysis, Part 1." (Posted on Youtube: April 5, 2015)

---. "Apocalypse Now: Analysis, Part 2." (Posted on Youtube: April 14, 2015)

---. "Breaking the Rules: The French New Wave." (Posted on Youtube: May 28, 2015)

---. "The Cinematography That Changed the World." (Posted on Youtube: July 31, 2020)

---. "City of God: The Open World Movie." (Posted on Youtube: April 30, 2015)

---. "Come and See - Sight and Sound." (Posted on Youtube: March 19, 2017)

---. "Colour in Storytelling." (Posted on Youtube: July 29, 2015)

---. "Composition in Storytelling." (Posted on Youtube: January 22, 2016)

---. "David Lynch: The Elusive Subconscious." (Posted on Youtube: September 3, 2016)

---. "The David Lynch Retrospective." (Posted on Youtube: September 12, 2020)

---. "The Greatest Directors You Don't Know." (Posted on Youtube: October 31, 2020)

---. "Groundbreaking Films That Defied Cinema Convention." (Posted on Youtube: December 29, 2020)

---. "How to Craft Morality Through Mystery." (Posted on Youtube: June 15, 2017)

---. "In Dreams." (Posted on Youtube: August 10, 2021)

---. "Lars von Trier: Deconstructing Cinema." (Posted on Youtube: July 23, 2016)

---. "Michael Haneke: Cinematic Truths and Realities Lies." (Posted on Youtube: January 9, 2018)

---. "The Tragic Side of Cinema." (Posted on Youtube: January 21, 2021)

---. "The Ugly Side of Beauty." (Posted on Youtube: November 26, 2020)

Cinema of Meaning ["Cinema of Meaning is a conversational podcast that seeks to explore the depths of what cinema has to offer. Each week, we discuss an individual film to get a better understanding of its storytelling qualities, to examine its cinematic techniques, and to uncover its deeper meanings. Hosted by video essayists Tom van der Linden from the channel Like Stories of Old and Thomas Flight."]

Cinematalk [A University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Communication Arts Podcast.]

Cinematary [Film discussion podcast and website originating out of Knoxville, TN.]

The Cinematologists ["'Consistently one of the finest cinema podcasts available' - Sight & Sound.
Hosted by Dr Dario Llinares & Dr Neil Fox."]

Cinema Year Zero (Independent publication based in London)

Cinephilia and Beyond [Croatian-based independent website dedicated to the world of film. One of the great in-depth film resources online.]

Cineuropa ["Cineuropa is the first European portal dedicated to cinema and audiovisual in 4 languages. With daily news, interviews, data bases, in-depth investigations into the audiovisual industry, Cineuropa aims at promoting the European film industry throughout the world."]

Clothes on Film [Christopher Laverty's website devoted to the art of costume design in film and television.]

Coley, Houston. "How Time Passes in Film: Narrative Flow, Part 1." (Posted on Youtube: March 30, 2017)

---. "The Meaning of Mirrors in Cinema." (Posted on Youtube: April 7, 2017)

Colins, K. Austin, et al. "Families on Film." The Film Comment Podcast (November 21, 2018) ["In marketing parlance, a “family film” has tended to mean an anodyne product, something that all could enjoy and that couldn’t possibly offend anyone. For our latest Film Comment Podcast, we’re taking our cue instead from movies actually about families, with all of the love, mundanity, and cringing horror left intact. That includes not only Shoplifters—a new release from that auteur of the comforts and complications of home, Hirokazu Kore-eda—but also the likes of Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays, Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, Yasujiro Ozu’s Equinox Flower, and a couple more that may surprise you. Film Comment’s Michael Koresky was joined for this discussion by K. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair; Aliza Ma, head programmer of Metrograph; and Farihah Zaman, filmmaker and FC contributor."]

ContraPoints. "J.K. Rowling." (Posted on Youtube: January 26, 2021)

Cook, Adam. "How Quentin Tarantino Took Inspiration From The Great Silence." Little White Lies (Posted on Youtube: January 26, 2016)

Criterion Confessions ["A survey of the Criterion Collection on DVD by Jamie S. Rich."]

Criterion Reflections [Podcast: David Blakeslee and guests view and discuss Criterion releases.]

Critics at Large ["Critics at Large publishes daily thought-provoking, independent criticism on all aspects of popular culture by an international group of writers. ... In an era when arts journalism is increasingly driven by careerism and conformity, we appeal to voyeurs of the arts rather than mere consumers."]

The Current [Online magazine attached to the Criterion Collection and the Criterion Channel]

The Dana Buckler Show [Podcast that examines various cinematic themes and genres.]

Dani Bethea ["EIC: We Are Horror Magazine. Writer: An Injustice, Gayly Dreadful, Ghouls Magazine, Rely on Horror, SUPERJUMP, and Upper Cut!"]

Daughters of Darkness [Podcast: Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger explore horror and cult films.]

David Ehrlich [Base in Brooklyn, NY, David is IndieWire's Senior Film Critic.]

David Hudson [Hudson's Daily report is one of the essential sources for keeping informed about the world of film and filmmaking.]

Dead End Follies [Montreal, Canada: "Culture for obsessive geeks and heavy metal freaks."]

Deep Focus Review [Minnesotan Brian Eggerts' review website.] 

De Fren, Allison. "Fembot in a Red Dress." (Posted on Vimeo: 2016) ["This video essay examines the cultural trope of the “lady in red” as it evolved from the genre of film noir to science fiction and from the human to the artificial female in a variety of film and television texts."]

---. "Ex Machina: Questioning the Human Machine." (Posted on Vimeo: 2017)

Digging Deeper. "A Separation: A Man-Made Divide." (Posted on Youtube: May 5, 2016)

---. "Carol: The Love Story in a Look." (Posted on Youtube: April 7, 2016)

"Directors’ 100 Greatest Films of All Time." Sight and Sound (June 2, 2021) [358 directors from around the world voted on their choices for the best films]

Director's Club [Podcast: "Director's Club is a movie podcast with many bonus episodes, that centers around the work of one movie director per show."]

The Directors Cut [Director's Guild of America (DGA): "The Director's Cut will bring you the behind-the-scenes stories of today's most talked about films. Each episode features a different director interviewed by one of their peers, leading to revealing conversations about the grueling, but rewarding process of bringing their films to life."]

The Directors Series ["THE DIRECTORS SERIES is a podcast dedicated to appreciating and deconstructing the work of contemporary and classic film directors. In the show, we breakdown the careers of film directors like Christopher Nolan, Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, The Coen Brothers, and Paul Thomas Anderson just to name a few. From their early works and short films to their blockbuster achievements and Oscar glory. The goal of the show to give the listener an insight into the film director's process and educate the next generation of filmmakers coming up. Hosted by Cameron Beyl."]

Dirty Movies ["Our mission is to create a platform to exhibit, to discuss and to promote courageous, audacious and innovative cinema made in all corners of the planet as broadly as possible, helping movies to inspire and bring about individual and social change to cinema professionals, cinema lovers and their respective communities. ... A ‘dirty movie’ is no ordinary movie: it challenges and breaks conventions. At DMovies, we believe that cinema stings, jars and provokes the viewer. Some films are gut-wrenching, leaving the audiences speechless and breathless. They experience pain and gratification at once. These films can also incur wrath, twist the viewer’s mind and even change the way they perceive and engage with the world. In short, some movies make people think. We call them dirty movies. These films challenge the perception that cinema is a mere entertainment tool. They make audiences face their own fears and demons, and the outcome isn’t always rosy. It often leaves audiences shaky and scarred, with a rancid taste in the mouth and a rank and offensive odour everywhere. It’s like a spiritual cleansing, an exorcism of the senses. You become a dirty person."]

Ehrlich, David. "Those '25 Best Films of the Year' Video Countdowns." (Archive of videos from 2012 - 2021)

Electric Ghost [United Kingdom: "Electric ghost is an independent online film publication dedicated to promoting film art wherever it’s found. We publish discerning analysis, undaunted polemics, personal meditations, and insightful interviews with talent across the breadth of moving-image creation and appreciation. Value is assigned based on our editorial principles and a shared belief
 in serious, selective cultural criticism absent of dogma, cliché, market interests, or philistinism."]

Enelow, Shonni. "The Great Recession: Restrained but resilient, a style of acting has taken hold that speaks to an era’s anxieties."  Film Quarterly (September-October 2016) ["This is another way to read the emotional withdrawal or refusal in these performances: as a response to a violent or chaotic environment, one that doesn’t offer an alternate vision of an open and embracing future. For even when representing an alienating or unfeeling world, actors of earlier eras generally appealed to the camera and their audiences to receive their feelings and implicitly trusted them to respond generously, either through vicarious sentiment or humanist compassion. Expressive acting—of which Method acting is one dominant form—is built on the conviction that audiences want an actor’s emotions to be in some way available to them. There’s a basic optimism in that conviction: the optimism that the world would be better if we all told each other the truth about what we feel. In contrast, many of today’s most lauded American film actors give performances that evince no such optimism about emotional expression. Returning to Winter’s Bone, for example, it’s clear that within the fiction of the film, Ree doesn’t trust the world to care about her well-being. But rather than contrast her character’s suspicion with an appeal to the (presumably) sympathetic film audience, Lawrence maintains her wariness throughout. Likewise, Mara doesn’t cut Lisbeth’s lowered gaze and near-inaudible, clipped speech with any revelation or outburst that would make us think she could be—or really is, deep down—other than she appears. There aren’t hidden motivations in these performances, and in fact, close to no subtext (the idea of subtext, with its inherently psychological schema, is parodied in Carol by a would-be writer who takes notes on the difference between what characters in movies say and what they really feel)."]

"ENG 281/282 Thinking About Films and Filmmaking." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Online Archive)

The Evolution of Horror ["The Evolution of Horror is a movie discussion podcast that covers scary movies old and new, from Universal Monsters to Exploitation, from Hitchcock to Ti West. Mike the host will be joined by different guest hosts each week, and will be covering anything and everything horror related, be looking at the way horror films have changed and evolved over the last hundred years."]

Faculty of Horror ["Tackling all things horror with a slash of analysis and research, horror journalists and occasional academics Andrea Subissati and Alexandra West are your hosts for brain-plumping discussions on all things that go bump in the night. Produced independently in Toronto, Ontario The Faculty of Horror is your best source for classic and contemporary horror film discussions that will haunt the libraries of your mind!"]

Father Son Holy Gore [St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada: "Overanalysing film since 2014."]

Feliciano, Moisés. "Yorgos Lanthimos and Realism." (Posted on Youtube: June 17, 2019)

Film New Books Network [Podcast with authors discussing their new books on film and film culture]

Film Analysis 2.0 ["The Film Analysis Guide was developed to meet the needs of faculty and students at Yale University who are interested in becoming familiar with the vocabulary of film studies and the techniques of cinema. The user can either read the complete document or search out a particular topic of interest. — Related links within the Guide are provided as appropriate, as are links to film clips illustrating the topic or term in question."]

Film at Lincoln Center Podcast ["Film at Lincoln Center Podcast is our free weekly podcast that features in-depth conversations with filmmakers, actors, critics, and more. "]

Film Comment [New York City: "Founded in 1962, Film Comment has been the home of independent film journalism for over 50 years, publishing in-depth interviews, critical analysis, and feature coverage of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world. Today a bimonthly print magazine and a website published by Film at Lincoln Center, Film Comment is a nonprofit publication that relies on the support of readers. Its activities supporting film culture also include The Film Comment Podcast and regular events and talks at Film at Lincoln Center and beyond."]

The Film Comment Podcast ["The Film Comment Podcast is a weekly space for critical conversation about film, with a look at topical issues, new releases, and the big picture."]

Film Criticism [Michigan/Allegheny College in Meadville, PA: "Film Criticism is a peer-reviewed, online publication whose aim is to bring together scholarship in the field of cinema and media studies in order to present the finest work in this area, foregrounding textual criticism as a primary value. Our readership is academic, although we strive to publish material that is both accessible to undergraduates and engaging to established scholars. With over 40 years of continuous publication, Film Criticism is the third oldest academic film journal in the United States. We have published work by such international scholars as Dudley Andrew, David Bordwell, David Cook, Andrew Horton, Ann Kaplan, Marcia Landy, Peter Lehman, Janet Staiger, and Robin Wood. Equally important, FC continues to present work from emerging generations of film and media scholars representing multiple critical, cultural and theoretical perspectives. Film Criticism is an open access academic journal that allows readers to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, and link to the full texts of articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose except where otherwise noted."]

Film Freedonia [Roderick Heath - "I am a writer and live in New South Wales, Australia. My desire in film criticism has always been to celebrate the cinema in its diversity, to explore the pleasures and mystique of good movies, and to tackle the cultural resonance of film as both an art form and a vehicle of entertainment. I love to look for signs of creativity and commitment in even the most demeaned genres, and also dig as deeply as I can into the meaning and method behind cinema’s most important works."]

Filmmaker [A respected print and online magazine.]

Film Matters [I'm an editor for this journal. Talk to me if you are interested in working to get published. "Film Matters is an exciting film magazine, celebrating the work of undergraduate film scholars. It is published three times a year, by students and for students, and each issue contains feature articles, as well as a healthy reviews section. In addition, with an undergraduate audience in mind, Film Matters will include occasional service-oriented pieces, such as profiles of film studies departments, articles that engage the undergraduate film studies community and prepare students for graduate study in this field, and resources and opportunities that undergraduate scholars can pursue."]

Film of the Week [Catherine Bray and Guy Lodge: "Films we cover may be on general release in cinemas (although not so much at the moment). They might be newly available via streamers like Amazon Prime, BFI Player, Mubi and Netflix. They might be coming up on TV and/or available via traditional broadcasters like the BBC, Channel 4 or ITV and their online platforms, or non-traditional broadcasters like YouTube. We would love to cover more Blu-Ray releases. In short, we’re platform-neutral right now. Post-pandemic, we might focus a little more on cinema releases, but we’re aware that a lot of really great cinema reaches people via smaller screens and want to reflect that. We’re also genre-neutral. Films selected will be some or all of the following: films we thought were noteworthy, enjoyable, worth watching, talking points, entertaining, significant, films we’d recommend you see. They don’t have to be perfect, they don’t have to be masterpieces, and not only can they be from any genre, but we’ll actively be trying to represent a range of genres, since good cinema is always varied. We will be avoiding hate-watching and panning films. There’s a very valid place for negative critique in film journalism, especially for sites which comprehensively review everything, but with this site, we’re trying to highlight what we personally found worthwhile. Not every film will be a new release. We will tend to focus on new releases, but restorations or special screenings of older films we love are absolutely eligible."]

Filmosophy ["Our names are Jack and Paulina. We live in Scotland. We met through a love of the movies, and decided that we needed to share that with other people, and encourage more people to love movies too. Filmosophy is designed to do just that. To cultivate a love of cinema and engage with everyone we can, we knew we needed a platform other than our own Facebook profiles to do so. We knew we needed a dedicated site that could organically grow, change, and evolve with time. Filmosophy, therefore, is part blog, part academic resource, part fansite, part review hub, part community project, and all passion. Our writing about cinema is a reflection of this; each and every piece we post is for others to enjoy and hopefully to engage with. Discussion and differences of opinion are essential to life, and to appreciation of art. As such, our readers are the heart of this project, and always will be. ...  On our site, for instance, you can find reviews of movies new and old, long-read articles that explore ideas and theories behind the films we watch, video essays about cinema, documentaries that we have made and produced, and up-to-date news about all things film."]

Film Quarterly ["Combining the best of scholarship and journalism since 1959, Film Quarterly publishes in-depth articles, reviews, and interviews on all aspects of cinema, media, and society—from film classics to emergent technologies. Film Quarterly is committed to advancing timely and intersectional approaches to the criticism and analysis of visual culture through exploring new perspectives on issues of diversity, race, gender, sexuality, and transnationalism."]

Film School Radio [Mike Kaspar's Southern California podcast: "Since 2006 showcasing the best in documentary, foreign and independent film. Listen to more than 1,500 interviews."]

Filmsite ["Tim Dirks created the popular filmsite.org website, aka Greatest Films, in mid-1996, and soon, it will celebrate its landmark 25th anniversary in 2021. He has been writing about and reviewing films on the site ever since. Tim originated Filmsite and has remained its sole contributor, manager, and editor - he adds significant content to the site spanning all the years of cinematic history, often writes blogs and other film-related articles, and has engaged in a number of on-camera interviews about film. ... The site includes rich reference material including Academy Awards history, film genres, film terms, film history by decade, trivia, and lots of lists of 'best' films, stars, scenes, quotes, resources, posters, etc."]

The Film Stage  ["The Film Stage is your spotlight on cinema: a leading resource for independent and international cinema, including extensive film festival coverage, reviews, features, interviews, and podcasts, as well as the most essential, up-to-date news and trailers. The Film Stage was created by editor-in-chief Jordan Raup and managing editor Daniel Mecca in the fall of 2008 at University of Buffalo. We have since expanded with a home base now in New York City, and a team of writers from around the globe, covering premier festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, TIFF, Sundance, NYFF, Locarno, SXSW, and beyond year-round."]

Final Girls [Podcast for the Bloody Women collective: "Bloody Women is a horror film journal committed to platforming viewpoints on horror cinema, TV and culture by women and non-binary writers." "The Final Girls are a UK based film collective exploring the intersections of horror film and feminism through curated screenings, programmes, zines and a podcast."]

Fipresci [The international federation of film critics.]


Flight, Thomas. "This is Atlanta - How Donald Glover Creates Social Commentary." (Posted on Youtube: May 22, 2018) ["An exploration of techniques Donald Glover and Hiro Murai use in the Childish Gambino music video "This is America" and TV show Atlanta to create unique social commentary."]

Foreign Correspondents: Deeper Into Hitchcock ["Two cinephiles and film scholars, Michał Oleszczyk and Sebastian Smoliński, engage in an in-depth discussion of every single Alfred Hitchcock movie in chronological order."]

Foreign Films Essay. "La Haine: - The reflexion of a fallen society." (Posted on Youtube: November 21, 2019)

---. "Yojimbo: The Villainy of Heroism." (Posted on Youtube: June 12, 2020)

Frameland [Netherlands: "Launched in 2017, Frameland set out to provide a podium for the cinematic roads less traveled​. Where writers can turn in a piece about any subject from any era, with quality of writing being our only requirement. We believe film doesn’t stop at the classics or the modern masterpieces, and that as critics and creators we have an obligation to expand horizons, ours as well as yours. Though obscurity (either in hypothesis or film) is not a necessity, it is our preference. Our goal to maintain this level of autonomy comes at a price. Or the lack thereof. We keep our website clean from outside interference, we pay server costs out of our own pockets and allocate our dwindling spare time to update the site once a month, like a magazine. We run Frameland for the love of it and we hope it shows."]

Frames of Empathy. "Magnolia: Reconciling with the Past." (Posted on Youtube: June 2, 2019)

Framing Media (formerly The Cinephiliacs) [Peter Labuza's podcast "Framing Media highlights new and innovative research in the field of moving image and sound studies. The name comes from Martin Scorsese's famous phrase, "Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out." We take this not just to be an issue of aesthetics, but technology, ideology, race, gender, and culture. Episodes focus on how media images—whether film, television, radio, new media, or beyond—are framed: the design and craft of what audiences see, the hidden stories of the labor and talent obscured outside it, and the histories of how frames are made, distributed, and exhibited."]

Freeman, Mark and Eloise Ross. "The Larrikin Girl: Challenging archetypes in Australian cinema." Senses of Cinema #103 (October 2022)

Frey, Mattias. "Great Directors: Haneke, Michael." Senses of Cinema #57 (December 2010)  [Michael Haneke: "My films are intended as polemical statements against the American ‘barrel down’ cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus."]

Gardener, Caden Mark, et al. "Trans Cinema Roundtable." The Film Comment Podcast (April 20, 2021) ["“A film that centers on a transgender person or storyline enters the culture like any other movie. The difference lies in the discourse around it.” So writes Caden Mark Gardner in a recent essay in the Criterion Collection’s online publication, the Current. “Trans people in movies are written and talked about as if they were abstract concepts, anomalies. For years, it’s been clear that very little attention is being paid (by filmmakers, critics, or marketers) to the ways in which a trans audience might see and react to these attempts at putting their lives in front of the camera, and the cisgender majority continues to control the conversation.” On this week’s episode, Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute brought together a roundtable of writers and artists who are reframing this conversation: critics Caden and Willow Maclay, and filmmakers Isabel Sandoval and Jessica Dunn Rovinelli. We asked the panel to respond to a number of excellent questions submitted by the Film Comment community, including: How does one define trans cinema? Are visibility and representation important, or should questions of labor be foregrounded? And which classic movies do our panelists consider to be “covertly” trans? The rich and wide-ranging conversation touched upon a number of movies—see below for links!"]

 "Get in the Cage." Post 45 (Special Issue on Nicolas Cage: 2021)

Guadagnano, Anthony. Claire Denis: Transgression of Borders (Posted on Youtube: April 18, 2015)

"Guillermo del Toro." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Hampton, Howard. "Cracked Actor: Donald Sutherland." Metrograph (November 2022) ["What is Donald Sutherland’s deal? He’s been acting in movies for nearly 60 years, an eternal presence who seems ingrained in the medium itself yet feels impossible to account for. Born in Canada in 1935, trained in England, he parlayed the rangy physique of a silent-movie Lincoln and the long, unmanageable face of an Expressionist caricature into a distinct form of stardom. In some freakishly unpremeditated manner, this beautiful gargoyle attained fame as an icon of hip irreverence in M*A*S*H (1970). Like his Klute (1971) co-star and anti-war comrade Jane Fonda, Sutherland is a counterculture symbol whom over the decades has become a timeless fixture on screens everywhere. Now at 87, in a career overlapping the last decades of Lillian Gish’s and the first decades of Adam Driver’s, he has become an éminence grise whose specialty is powerful, aristocratic old lions—men who seem made of money and disdain."]

"Handout: How to Read a Film." (University of Pennsylvania: ND)

Harris, Cydnii Wilde. "Get Out as the Horror Black Films Face in the Foreign Market." (Posted on Youtube: March 14, 2018)

The Haunted Screen ["The Haunted Screen is a narrative podcast about film, history, and film history. Professor Travis Mushett provides extensively-researched episodes about movements in global cinema, and delivers them in an irreverent, easy-to-listen-to package that appeals to both hardcore cinephiles and casual moviegoers. The first season—"From Caligari to Hitler"—investigates the chaotic, creative world of Weimar Germany."]

Hellbent for Horror ["S.A. Bradley is the host of the popular podcast Hellbent For Horror, exploring all things horror across books, film, comics, and music. Bradley has loved being scared by over 1,600 horror films."]

High on Films ["Cinema is the flickering light of entertainment that pierce through gloomy banality of life, an ounce of hope that pacifies the pain, a dropper full of dream that transcends deadening dimension of reality. Cinema has the power to make you high, but in the most positive and powerful way. In a way, where you get high but enlightened. ... HOF will not just review popular great films, but we will be also showcasing lesser known/almost unknown titles from across the globe from time to time. Our Lists will be elaborate, so if we list something as a good film, take it as a recommendation. High on Films is basically about film writing, so if there is anything in the world of movies worth writing about, we will definitely write it. High on Films is going to make sure that your cinematic ecstasy does not leave your system ever. Watch Movies. Get High. Tell us about it."]


Homberg, Jan, et al. "The Seventh Seal." In Our Time (September 21, 2023) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most celebrated film of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). It begins with an image that, once seen, stays with you for the rest of your life: the figure of Death playing chess with a Crusader on the rocky Swedish shore. The release of this film in 1957 brought Bergman fame around the world. We see Antonius Block, the Crusader, realising he can’t beat Death but wanting to prolong this final game for one last act, without yet knowing what that act might be. As he goes on a journey through a plague ridden world, his meeting with a family of jesters and their baby offers him some kind of epiphany."]

Horror Pod Class ["Come meet Mike and Tyler, two high school teachers who absolutely love to talk and write about the horror genre! We also own and write for a website named Signal Horizon, where you can get the latest news, reviews, and analysis of works from the horror and dark science fiction genres!"]

Implicitly Pretentious. "The Big Ideas of Kubo and the Two Strings." (Posted on Youtube: November 6, 2019)

---. "El Camino and Memory as a Savior." (Posted on Youtube: October 22, 2019)

---. "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Bending Reality with Nostalgia."  (Posted on Youtube: January 25, 2020)

Hudson, David. "Listening to the Haunted Screen." Current (October 24, 2022) ["At the top of the first episode of his new podcast, The Haunted Screen, Travis Mushett credits Karina Longworth with the inspiration. Like Longworth, Mushett, who teaches film and media history at Fordham University and Marymount Manhattan College, shapes swaths of cinema’s past into engaging, character-driven stories. But while Longworth’s You Must Remember This explores “the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century,” Mushett aims to devote each season of The Haunted Screen to a movement that sprang up overseas and impacted cinema around the world."]

---. "Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation." Current (November 14, 2022) [Description of Cinema Speculation: "In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with Cinema Speculation, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans—and all movie lovers—could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT’s and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the artform ever."]

IndieWire ["Since launching on July 15, 1996, IndieWire has grown into the leading news, information and networking site for independent-minded filmmakers, the industry and moviegoers alike. Originally conceived as an online forum and newsletter for filmmakers and festivals, IndieWire has grown over the last two decades into a preeminent source for film and television news, reviews, interviews, global festival coverage and more. Our mission has always been to create a platform to deliver news, information and other resources to creators and movie lovers, while facilitating a greater appreciation of independent filmmaking to the masses."]

Infranaut. "How Capitalism Commodifies Revolution and Sorry to Bother You." (Posted on Youtube: January 10, 2019)  

InSession Film ["We are movie cinephiles and this website is dedicated to our love of art and film. Regardless of type or genre, art house or mainstream, whatever it may be, we love discussing and analyzing everything that is movies and film. You can hear us discuss a variety of topics on the InSession Film Podcast, whether it be reviews, lists or other film-related discussions. We also feature written reviews and other content throughout the site as well that we hope you enjoy as well."]

Ion Cinema ["IONCINEMA.COM aims at providing a critical, analytic approach to film journalism, and we are dedicated to providing a site that is rich in information, sharp in its dissection of the works discussed on the site and we hope to give “electrical charges” to the films and filmmakers that we feel you should include in your appreciation of the 7th art."]

Ivins, Laura. "Structures of Looking in Portrait of a Lady on Fire." A Place for Film (December 16, 2020) 

Japan on Film [Perry Constantine's podcast does a deep dive into Japanese films.] 

Javvadi, Praveena. "Establishing Perspective in Portrait of a Lady on Fire." The Best Pictures Project (April 5, 2021)

Johnson, Jenna. "Dogtooth: A Lacanian Analysis." (Posted on Youtube: December 20, 2019)

Jones, Matthew. "10 Metaphysical Films for Philosophy Students." Philosophy in Film (December 8, 2019) ["To be considered a metaphysical work, a film must possess all of the following characteristics: 1) A metaphysical film addresses questions related to the field of metaphysics in its narrative, either directly or indirectly. 2) A metaphysical film uses the unique elements of the filmmaking process (cinematography, editing, special effects, etc.) to direct attention to the question of “reality.” 3) A metaphysical film uses visual effects to transcend reality in a way that implicitly asks (or attempts to answer) metaphysical questions."]

Journal of Religion & Film ["The Journal of Religion & Film is a peer reviewed journal which is committed to the study of connections between the medium of film and the phenomena of religion, however those are defined. We encourage multiple approaches to the study of religion and film, including (but not limited to) the analysis of how religious traditions are portrayed in films; exploration of the religious concepts that may be found or utilized in the interpretation of films; study of how the religious ideals and background of the filmmakers may have influenced them; and analysis of how films themselves may operate “religiously” for viewers. We seek to create better understandings of both religion and film through the study of their mutual encounter and interactions."]

Kinoscope ["Kinoscope is an online platform dedicated to presenting films by established and emerging filmmakers. It praises a broad variety of cinematic works through curated streaming/VOD exhibition, live screenings and publications. Kinoscope aims to enhance the appreciation and understanding of film as an art form globally among diverse audiences."]

Kogonada. "Nothing at Stake: Roma." (Posted on Vimeo: 2020)

Larsen on Film ["Josh is the co-host of the radio show and podcast Filmspotting, author of Movies Are Prayers, and editor/producer for Think Christian, a website and podcast exploring faith and pop culture. He’s been writing and speaking about movies professionally since 1994."]

The Last Thing I Saw ["Writer-editor Nicolas Rapold talks with guests about the movies they've been watching. It's as simple as that. From home viewing to the latest from festivals. Named one of the 10 Best Film Podcasts by Sight & Sound magazine."]

Lee, Kevin B. "Kevin B. Lee’s New Video Essay Explores Mourning with Minari." Hyperallergic (April 14, 2021) ["In a Hyperallergic exclusive, Lee muses on the aftermath of the Atlanta spa shootings and how the media imagines Asian Americans."]

---. "Explosive Paradox: On Platoon." The Cine-Files #15 (Fall 2020) ["The most mentioned video essay in the Best Video Essays of 2020 Survey conducted by Sight & Sound Magazine" - it is a reflection of his experiences watching Oliver Stone's 1986 movie Platoon in the theater with his family."]

Lessons From the Screenplay. "American Beauty: The Art of the Character (Part 1)." (Posted on Youtube: July 26, 2016)

---. "Annihilation: The Act of Creation." (Posted on Youtube: December 30, 2018) ["Every genre brings with it a set of expectations that shapes the kinds of stories it can tell and the themes it can explore, and science fiction is perhaps the best genre to openly explore fundamental ideas of existence. So in this video, we investigate how Annihilation takes biological, existential concepts and translates them into narrative elements. We explore how these are expressed in every element of the story, from the characters, to the environment, to the monsters that inhabit it. And we examine how subverting one of the fundamental elements of character creates an experience that is truly alien."]

---. "Get Out - A New Perspective in Horror." (Posted on Youtube: February 27, 2018) ["Get Out takes a situation that is universally relatable and adds a specific and unfamiliar protagonist. In doing so, the film unlocks new ways of creating tension and establishing trust."]

---. "Gone Girl: Don't Underestimate the Screenwriter." (Posted on Youtube: June 8, 2016) ["Gone Girl uses classic screenwriting techniques to tell its twisty, modern noir story. This video examines three of the techniques used by screenwriter Gillian Flynn to see how and why they work so well."]

Like Stories of Old. "The Absurdist Philosophy of Synechdoche, New York." (Posted on Youtube: May 20, 2018) [An examination of existentialist philosopher Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and the absurdist philosophy of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York.]

---. "A Mythology of Hope – The Lord of the Rings (part 2)." (Posted on Youtube: August 31, 2018) ["An extensive exploration into the deeper meanings of The Lord of the Rings. This second and final part examines the presence and purpose of higher forces in Middle-earth, and the essential role of hope in Tolkien's mythology." Books discussed: Matthew Dickerson – Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory in The Lord of the Rings; Bradley Birzer – J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth; Peter Kreeft – The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings.]


---. "The Archetype of the Warrior - How Film Helps Empower Us All." (Posted on Youtube: January 15, 2018) ["Exploring the Archetype of the Warrior in films, based on Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s King, Warrior, Magician, Lover and Carol S. Pearson’s The Hero Within."]

---. "Baby Driver: Introversion Done Right." (Posted on Youtube: October 13, 2017) ["An examination of introversion in Baby Driver and how Edgar Wright subverts the stereotypical introvert in an extroverted society." Uses Laurie Helgoe's Introvert Power – Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength in the analysis of the characterization of Baby in the film.]

---. "The Before Trilogy: Performing a Real Relationship." (Posted on Youtube: November 10, 2017) [I would easily include this trilogy in my best of cinema. The first time I saw Before Sunrise I was floored because I had never seen a film that captured the magic, mystery and mood of unplanned romance (I won't ruin the end for those that haven't seen it) in such a realistic way. The second and third film, made 9 years later each time, continues to defy the Hollywood/Hallmark co-optation of our romantic ideas. The collaboration of Richard Linklater (director/writer), Kim Krizan (co-writer), Ethan Hawke (actor/collaborator), and Julie Delpy (actor/collaborator), is a major achievement in collaborative filmmaking and escapes the stunt feel of the later unrelated Linklater film Boyhood. I've been dreaming of my film class next semester and how I could explore B. Ruby Rich's call to move past Hollywood's/America's singular focus on individualistic experience and maybe this could be the start from a masterpiece on an evolving dyad experience that avoids privileging one perspective and moving outward to more fully collective depictions. "A video essay exploring how Richard Linklater created one of the most unique portrayals of a real relationship in his Before Trilogy; consisting of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight."]

---. "Capturing the Intuitive Wisdom of Children: Children of Heaven." (Posted on Youtube: October 31, 2018) 



---. "The Essence of Faith – What Signs Was Really About." (Posted on Youtube: December 29, 2018) ["Exploring the essence of faith in M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs." Books discussed: Jerome Bruner – Acts of Meaning: Four Lecture on Mind and Culture; Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning.]

---. "Everyday Virtue: Paterson and David Foster Wallace." (Posted on Youtube: May 26, 2017)

---. "The Fantasy of Ultimate Purpose – How Our Entertainment Reveals Our Deepest Desire." (Posted on Youtube: July 31, 2018) ["Explores the anatomy of purpose in films, television series and video games, how it differs from finding meaning in our own lives, and the importance of discussing our escapes into these fictional worlds. Book used: Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning."]

---. "Fight Club: How (Not) to Become a Space Monkey." (Posted on Youtube: November 16, 2019) ["Video essay on Fight Club; examining how charismatic leaders like Tyler Durden turn men into Space Monkeys." Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death is used to formulate the critique/interpretation.]

---. "First Man: A Sobering Look at Human Greatness." (Posted on Youtube: January 30, 2019)

---. "Get Out: White Fragility as a Movie Trope." (Posted on Youtube: May 19, 2017)

---. "Heroism and Morality - The Lord of the Rings, Part 1." (Posted on Youtube: August 24, 2018) ["An extensive exploration into the deeper meanings of The Lord of the Rings. This first part examines Tolkien’s sanctification of pagan virtues, and the role of heroism and moral victory in Middle-earth." Books discussed: Matthew Dickerson – Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory in The Lord of the Rings; Bradley Birzer – J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth; Peter Kreeft – The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings.]

---. "Hostiles and Wind River – America's Unresolved Grief." (Posted on Youtube: June 30, 2018)

---. "How Ken Burns Changed the Way We Look at History." (Posted on Youtube: September 15, 2017) ["An exploration of the academic validity and public value of the work of renowned documentarian Ken Burns. Content: 0:00 Introduction; 1:34 What is History?; 4:57 The Ken Burns Approach; 9:22 Bringing History to Life."  Uses two books in its analysis: Ways of Knowing by Jonathan W. Moses and Torbjorn L. Knutsen, and What is History? by E.H. Carr.]

---. "In Search of Absolute Beauty." (Posted on Youtube: March 26, 2021)

---. "In Search of the Distinctively Human: The Philosophy of Blade Runner 2049." (Posted on Youtube: Jan 29, 2018) [Uses Ernest Becker's The Birth and Death of Meaning and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.]

---. "Into the Dark Depths of Humanity – Understanding Denis Villeneuve." (Posted on Youtube: October 31, 2021) ["A deep dive analysis of the filmmaking philosophy of Denis Villeneuve, and of the themes and meanings found in his work."]




---. "Lies of Heroism - Redefining the Anti-War Film." (Posted on Youtube: August 31, 2020)


---. "The Lover Within: How Moonlight Relates to ALL Men." (Posted on Youtube: April 9, 2017)

---. "The Myth of Heroic Masculine Purpose." (Posted on Youtube: February 28, 2022) ["A critical analysis of the myth of heroic masculine purpose, and its effect on men’s perception of manhood, and on their connection to others and to the world."]

---. "The New World: The Lost Art of Grief." (Posted on Youtube: September 29, 2017) ["An examination of sorrow and grief in Terrence Malick’s The New World based on Francis Weller’ The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. North Atlantic Books: "The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them. Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss. Through moving personal stories, poetry, and insightful reflections he leads us into the central energy of sorrow, and to the profound healing and heightened communion with each other and our planet that reside alongside it. The Wild Edge of Sorrow explains that grief has always been communal and illustrates how we need the healing touch of others, an atmosphere of compassion, and the comfort of ritual in order to fully metabolize our grief. Weller describes how we often hide our pain from the world, wrapping it in a secret mantle of shame. This causes sorrow to linger unexpressed in our bodies, weighing us down and pulling us into the territory of depression and death. We have come to fear grief and feel too alone to face an encounter with the powerful energies of sorrow. Those who work with people in grief, who have experienced the loss of a loved one, who mourn the ongoing destruction of our planet, or who suffer the accumulated traumas of a lifetime will appreciate the discussion of obstacles to successful grief work such as privatized pain, lack of communal rituals, a pervasive feeling of fear, and a culturally restrictive range of emotion. Weller highlights the intimate bond between grief and gratitude, sorrow and intimacy. In addition to showing us that the greatest gifts are often hidden in the things we avoid, he offers powerful tools and rituals and a list of resources to help us transform grief into a force that allows us to live and love more fully."]

---. "Okja: Understanding the (Im)Morality of Animal Consumption." (Posted on Youtube: August 4, 2017)

---. "The Perilous Journey of a Truly Beautiful Soul – Hacksaw Ridge." (Posted on Youtube: October 15, 2018) ["In the 19th century, Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot to explore the perilous journey of the truly beautiful soul. With Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson set out to portray a similar journey; that of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to win a medal of honor. This video dives deeper into this incredible story, examines its narrative structure, the qualities of its main character and reflects on the place of goodness and innocence in a violent world. Sources: K.M. Weiland – Creating Character Arcs"]

---. "The Philosophy of Cloud Atlas: How Beauty Will Save the World." (Posted on Youtube: February 14, 2018) ["The philosophy of Cloud Atlas through the lens of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jose Saramago, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn."]

---. "The Philosophy of Sense8: Emotion and Connection." (Posted on Youtube: July 7, 2017)

---. "The Philosophy of The Fountain – Escaping Our Mental Prisons." (Posted on Youtube: November 28, 2018) ["Revisiting The Fountain; this video essay pushes beyond the various interpretations of the plot to explore the deeper themes at the heart of Darren Aronofsky’s ambitious film." Books discussed: Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death; Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now.]

---. "The Problem of Other Minds – How Cinema Explores Consciousness." (Posted on Youtube: May 31, 2018) ["How have films engaged the problem of other minds? In this video essay, I discuss cinematic explorations into consciousness in the context of the cognitive revolution that has challenged many of the basic assumptions about what was for a long time believed to be a uniquely human trait." Uses Frans de Waal's book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?: "Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition--in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos--to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we've underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal's landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal--and human--intelligence."]

---. "Prometheus & Covenant: Building a Mythos of Savage Creation." (Posted on Youtube: October 27, 2017) ["On the road towards Alien: Awakening; this in-depth analysis explores how Prometheus and Covenant built a mythos of savage creation around one of the most iconic movie monsters."]


---. "Sunshine – A Visceral Experience of Life, Death and Meaning." (Posted on Youtube: September 28, 2018) ["An examination of Sunshine and its visceral presentation of themes of life, death and meaning." Book discussed: Carl Sagan – Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.]


---. "The Tree of Life: Crafting an Existential Masterpiece." (Posted on Youtube: May 7, 2017)

---. "The Ultimate Antidote for Cynicism: It’s a Wonderful Life." (Posted on Youtube: December 21, 2017) ["A video essay looking at It’s a Wonderful Life and its discussion on individualism that is arguably more relevant than ever."]

---. "Venturing into Sacred Space | Archetype of the Magician." (Posted on Youtube: April 21, 2018) ["In this conclusion of my Archetype Series based on the book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, I examine the archetype of the Magician and explore some related concepts such as initiation, ritual process and sacred space." Other sources discussed:  Carol S. Pearson – The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By; Robert Moore – The Archetype of Initiation: Sacred Space, Ritual Process and Personal Transformation; Mircea Eliade - The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion; Victor Turner – The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure.]

---. "What Makes a Great King? Exploring the Archetype of the King in Movies and Television." (Posted on Youtube: August 18, 2017) [MB: I think this has a great message about the leader role/archetype (not comfortable with the king thing, but I recognize it is an archetype) and only wish that it wasn't limited to just a discussion of masculine archetypes. Easily beats the ocean of facile business leadership books. From the author: "... Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s archetypes" in their book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine  "are a very interesting way to analyze media and provide personal insights, similarly to Joseph Campbell’s related concept of the Hero’s Journey."]

Longworth, Karina. "The Blacklist." You Must Remember This! (2016) ["In the 1940s and 50s, dozens of writers, producers, directors and stars were pushed to the margins of the film industry due to the perception of their personal politics. Though socialism and anti-Fascism had been in vogue just a few years earlier, now an affiliation with such movements was considered tantamount to treason. The Blacklist traces how this happened, through the stories of The Hollywood Ten, Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, John Garfield, Kirk Douglas and more."]

---. "Erotic 80s." You Must Remember This! (2022) ["Here in 2022, there is more public conversation about the nuances of human sexuality–and sexual abuse and harassment–than at any time in modern history. And yet, sex has all but disappeared from mainstream American movies, most of which would pass the sexual standard set by the strict censorship of the Production Code of the 1930s. This season of You Must Remember This will explore the relatively brief period, beginning in the 1970s and ending around the end of the millennium, when Hollywood movies explored the sexual lives, mores and fantasies of adults with degrees of candor, realism and imagination not seen before or since. Why did genres like the erotic thriller, body horror, neo-noir and the sex comedy flourish in the 80s and 90s, what was happening culturally that made these movies possible and popular, and why did Hollywood stop taking sex seriously? Each episode of Erotic 80s examines a single year, and one or more films that share a genre, a theme or a star, with topics ranging from the politics of porn, to the first camcorder sex tape scandal, to the sexualization of teens, to Hollywood’s lingering fear of interracial coupling. Some of the stars and filmmakers covered include Tom Cruise, Melanie Griffith, Richard Gere, Glenn Close, Rob Lowe, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Costner, Sean Young, Adrian Lyne, Amy Heckerling, Brian DePalma and much, much more."]

López, Cristina Álvarez and Adrian Martin. "Export/Import | Pedro Almodóvar’s Dark Habits & What Have I Done to Deserve This?" (Posted on Youtube: September 6, 2019)



The Magic Lantern ["Welcome to The Magic Lantern film podcast! We are your hosts, Ericca Long and Cole Roulain, and our show is devoted to sharing our enduring cinematic memories. Join us for an ongoing, informal discussion of the classic and contemporary films we love and what we love about them. If you've been looking for a podcast to explore old and new favorites with fellow film lovers, you've come to the right place."]

MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture ["MAI provides a free open-access publication forum for feminist scholars, writers, artists and activists who address visual culture at large. Our authors operate under the assumption that female experiences are never uniform. Just like in everyday life, in art and media multiple other markers of social difference always influence expressions of female, agency, perspective and identity."]

Matt Zoller Seitz [Archive of the film critics work on the Roger Ebert website.]

McDonagh, Maitland. Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento. University of Minnesota Press, 1991. ["Italian filmmaker Dario Argento's horror films have been described as a blend of Alfred Hitchcock and George Romero, psychologically rich, colorful, and at times garish, excelling at taking the best elements of the splatter and exploitation genres and laying them over a dark undercurrent of human emotions and psyches. Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds, which dissects such Argento cult films as Two Evil Eyes, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Suspiria, and Deep Red, includes a new introduction discussing Argento's most recent films, from The Stendahl Syndrome to Mother of Tears; an updated filmography; and an interview with Argento."]

McGoff, Jessica. "My Mulholland: On Mulholland Drive." The Cine-Files #15 (Fall 2020) ["The second-most mentioned video essay in the Best Video Essays of 2020 Survey conducted by Sight & Sound Magazine" - it is a reflection on the impact David Lynch's 2001 movie Mulholland Drive had on the author at 13 and now.] 

Mediático [ School of Media, Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England: "Mediático is a collectively authored media and film studies blog, which showcases a diverse array of research, news, views and perspectives on Latin(o/a/x) American, Spanish and Portuguese media cultures. The site offers timely reactions to new media works and current developments as well as analysis of past works, while also reflecting on larger issues in television, film, radio, music, the Internet, print and any other media, always with a Latin American or Latino/a focus. Mediático’s open access ethos allows us to publish and curate original internationally produced research and make it available for free to a global audience with an immediacy rarely afforded by more traditional academic publishing avenues."]

Metrograph Journal [NYC, NY: Journal for "Metrograph is the ultimate place for movie enthusiasts to experience prestigious film and content. Metrograph represents a special, curated world of cinema, harkening back to the great New York movie theaters of the 1920s and the Commissaries of Hollywood Studio back lots, a world inhabited by movie professionals screening their work, taking meetings, watching films, and collaborating together."]

Michael Koresky [The film critic's archive of his column "Queer & Now & Then" and other writings at Filmmaker.]

Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism ["Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism is a refereed open access publication whose aim is to create a forum for the range of analysis, debate and discussion that only a journal devoted to a detailed film criticism can adequately provide. We are committed to publishing rigorous but accessible critical writing, at a variety of lengths, that is responsive to the detailed texture and artistry of film and television, old and new. We also welcome articles that illuminate concepts, analytical methods and questions in film aesthetics that are of significance to film criticism. The journal is published annually. Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism is a joint venture between the Universities of Warwick, Reading, and Oxford."]

Mushett, Travis. "1.1 Beginnings: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the Rise of Expressionism, and the Long Shadow of World War I." The Haunted Screen (August 17, 2022) ["A world war lost. An economy in tatters. A country riven by political violence. Germany’s Weimar Era had a tumultuous birth, and with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, its filmmakers began to channel that mayhem into sinister celluloid fantasies."]

---. "1.2 Villains: Nosferatu, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, and the Timeliness of Terror." The Haunted Screen (August 17, 2022) ["In 1922, a pair of diabolical creatures arrived on German movie screens. What can the vampire Count Orlok and the supercriminal Dr. Mabuse teach us about the fears and fantasies lurking in the Weimar imagination?"]

---. "1.3 — Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou, Pt. I: Seduction, Spectacle, and the Birth of Nazism." The Haunted Screen (August 24, 2022) ["Through movies like Destiny, Die Nibelungen, and Metropolis, the husband/wife team of director Fritz Lang and screenwriter Thea von Harbou helped establish Berlin as Hollywood’s one true rival. But their emergence as international celebrities paralleled the rise of a certain failed artist storming through the beer halls of Munich."]

---. "1.4 G.W. Pabst & the German Left: When Pictures Got Political." The Haunted Screen (August 24, 2022) ["In a political environment as combustible as the Weimar Republic, it was only a matter of time before the country’s Kinos became venues for ideological warfare. G.W. Pabst was on the frontlines, firing broadsides against nationalism (Kameradschaft), capitalism (The Threepenny Opera), and the patriarchy (Pandora’s Box). But even in the face of a rising fascism, the German left threatened to tear itself apart."]

---. "1.5 — Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou, Pt. II: A Marriage—and a Country—on the Brink." The Haunted Screen (September 7, 2022) ["As the 1920s became the 1930s, both the Lang-von Harbou marriage and German democracy itself teetered on the edge of collapse. In this moment of personal and political chaos, the couple made movies—and choices—that would define their legacies."]

---. "1.6 — The End: The Blue Angel and the Twilight of the Weimar Republic." The Haunted Screen (September 21, 2022) ["Nazi, dissident, victim… Josef von Sternberg’s cabaret classic The Blue Angel had three stars: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, and Kurt Gerron. As the Weimar Era ended and the Third Reich began, fate brought them—and all of Germany—to a crossroads. What would they choose, and what choices would be taken from them?"]

The Next Picture Show ["A biweekly roundtable by the former editorial team of The Dissolve examining how classic films inspire and inform modern movies. Episodes take a deep dive into a classic film and its legacy in the first half, then compare and contrast that film with a modern successor in the second. Hosted and produced by Genevieve Koski, Keith Phipps, Tasha Robinson and Scott Tobias. Part of the Filmspotting family of podcasts."]


Notebook [Hosted by the streaming site MUBI: "Notebook is a daily, international film publication. Our mission is to guide film lovers searching, lost or adrift in an overwhelming sea of content. We offer text, images, sounds and video as critical maps."]

Nwonka, Clive James. "The Politics of Race in American Film." LSE US Centre (Spring 2021) ["The Politics of Race in American Film is a limited podcast series from the LSE US Centre, hosted by Dr Clive James Nwonka, and released in the spring of 2021. Over five episodes this podcast explores what makes film such a powerful lens for understanding race, politics & society."]

Observations on Film Art [Website for the work of film critics David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson]

Offscreen ["Offscreen has been online since 1997, along with its French language sister journal Hors Champ. Based in Montréal, Offscreen is a wide-ranging film journal that covers film festivals, retrospectives, film forums, and both popular and more academic events. Part of our mandate is to cover the Montreal film scene, but within an international context. The scope of its content, and the type of material featured and promoted in Offscreen can be summarized as follows: 1) personal and independent film above big budget, formulaic film; 2) the under-represented (young, up and coming filmmakers); 3) films with creative design and broad social commitment; 4) local and Canadian films/filmmakers; 5) Asian and alternative cinemas (horror, exploitation, esoteric, experimental, documentary, etc.). Unlike most online journals that offer the brief review format, Offscreen features extensive interviews, in-depth festival coverage, and lengthy, well-researched essays. The latter is in line with the guiding editorial policy at Offscreen, which is to allow for the flexibility to feature rigorous, well-researched texts alongside material that does not fit into traditional scholarly formats (director interviews, film festival reports, DVD reviews, etc.). In short, our goal is to produce intelligent, thoughtful, and combative film criticism, analysis, discussion, and theory. We are driven to this end because we feel strongly that, within today’s image saturated info-entertainment landscape, cinema needs to be rigorously discussed in order to continue being an important voice of cultural and artistic expression well into the 21st century."]

One Hundred Years of Cinema. "1935: Triumph of the Will - The Power of Propaganda." (Posted on Youtube: January 21, 2018) ["Triumph of the Will is regarded as one of the most powerful propaganda pieces ever made, but how did the film advance the racist and anti-Semitic ideology of the Nazi party? What is the history of cinema as a tool of propaganda? Triumph of the Will is one of the most famous propaganda movies ever made. The films is a semi-documentary take on sixth annual National Socialist conference in Nuremberg in 1934, by director Leni Riefenstahl. It covers 4 days worth of speeches, parades and city wide celebration. It’s edited together out of hundreds of hours of footage, and it unveils the core message of the conference without commentary or inter title. Although it’s often praised as revolutionising the art of film propaganda, it actually adds very few techniques of its own, instead drawing on the decades of development in propaganda that came before. So lets take a look at the history of the propaganda film and how theses techniques were used by Riefenstahl to advance the Nazi Ideology."]

Open Culture [This site has regular posts on films and film culture. "Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it."]

"Paul Thomas Anderson." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Performing Arts New Books Network (Ongoing Archive of interviews with authors on this subject)

Petkova, Savina. "Notebook Primer: Mermaid Cinema." Notebook (April 15, 2021) ["An introduction, via the aquatic creature's form, to the many films that feature mermaids."]

Philosophy in Film ["Philosophy seeks to address some of the most pressing questions in the fields of metaphysics, ethics, logic, mathematics, and aesthetics, among others. It is a subject of study that is both far-reaching and vitally important for our society. We turn to philosophy to contemplate our existence, purpose, and methods and practices for conducting our daily lives. Philosophy is also particularly applicable to film, as film can operate as a reflection or reproduction of humanity, or a visual story crafted with the intention of addressing philosophical questions. Philosophical theory and film theory are also intrinsically linked, as they both assess their respective subjects at the most fundamental levels. Philosophy in Film was created to merge these two subjects, and apply philosophical theories and methodology to the study and interpretation of individual films, directors, genres, film viewership, and the history of film production."]

Photogénie [Brussels, Belgium: "Photogénie combines a sense of wonderment with keen analyses. The connecting principle is the intense perception of cinema. The articles on this website – on films old and new, cinema past and present – don’t try and force this perception to fit preconceived frameworks, but endeavor to make the reader/viewer receptive to what films can make us see, in an attempt to put the allure of cinema into words."]

Poole, W. Scott. Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire. Catapult, 2022. ["The panoramic story of how the horror genre transformed into one of the most incisive critiques of unchecked American imperial power. The American empire emerged from the shadows of World War II. As the nation’s influence swept the globe with near impunity, a host of evil forces followed—from racism, exploitation, and military invasion to killer clowns, flying saucers, and monsters borne of a fear of the other. By viewing American imperial history through the prism of the horror genre, Dark Carnivals lays bare how the genre shaped us, distracted us, and gave form to a violence as American as apple pie. A carnival ride that connects the mushroom clouds of 1945 to the beaches of Amity Island, Charles Manson to the massacre at My Lai, and John Wayne to John Wayne Gacy, the new book by acclaimed historian W. Scott Poole reveals how horror films and fictions have followed the course of America’s military and cultural empire and explores how the shadow of our national sins can take on the form of mass entertainment."]

The Projection Booth [Mike White's podcast is consistently one of the best film podcasts and at 500+ episodes filled with long form, in-depth analysis of a impressively wide range of films, featuring guest critics and the actual filmmakers, this is a must listen for any cinephile.]

Projections ["Welcome to the Projections podcast - a dialogue about film and psychoanalysis, hosted by Sarah Kathryn Cleaver and Mary Wild. We focus on cinematic representations of the psyche - the inner life state that is difficult to express relying on language alone, but uniquely captured on film. The disciplines of psychoanalysis and cinema have long been explored side by side, and were formally established in the same year: 1895, when the Lumière brothers held their first film screening in a Paris Hotel, whilst Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer published ‘Studies in Hysteria’ in Vienna. Our favourite auteurs are Haneke, von Trier, Campion, Lynch, Kubrick, Arnold, Preminger, Cavani, Coppola and Polanski. We're obsessed with a variety of genres such as melodrama, documentary, horror, noir, biopics, cult and science fiction. We want to analyse movies relating to identity, philosophy, gender, surrealism, fashion, power, dreams, desire and sexuality. Film is a means to unlock the mysteries of the human mind... subscribe and follow our cinematic adventures into the unconscious..."] 

Rappaport, Mark.  "The Empty Screen or the Metaphysics of Movies." (Posted on Youtube: February 6, 2017)  ["The screen is a neutral element in the film-going experience. Or is it? It projects dreams but is also the receptacle of our dreams. It’s the vehicle for delivering the image to an audience — but does it also watch the audience at the same time? Is it a complicitous membrane which audience members can penetrate and which interacts with the spectators, despite its seeming passivity? Maybe — to all of the above …"]

"Recommended Films from 1930 - Present." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Online Archives)

Reverse Shot ["Reverse Shot is a publication of the Museum of the Moving Image. The magazine was first formed in 2003 and was run independently by editors Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert until September 2014, when they partnered with the Museum."]

Roger Ebert [Website run by Roger's widow Chaz and a collection of movie critics.]

Ross, Alex. "How a Wagner Opera Defined the Sound of Hollywood Blockbusters." The New Yorker (Posted on Youtube: September 15, 2020)

Runquist, Karsten. "Why 4:3 Looks So Good." (Posted on Youtube: October 2021)

Schonig, Jordan. "The Other Side of Digital Cinema: Tangerine and Digital Realism." (Posted on Youtube: September 6, 2021) ["This video essay examines what Nicholas Rombes's" in his book Cinema in the Digital Age "calls the "double logic of digital cinema," an emerging trend toward realism in a medium that is often associated with fantasy. The video examines the Dogme 95 movement as well as the film Tangerine (Baker, 2015)."]

---. "Speed Racer (2008), Cel Animation, and Animetism." (Posted on Youtube: July 28, 2021) ["Speed Racer (Wachowskis, 2008) isn't just a "cartoony" movie; it's also about cartoons. This video essay examines how the visual design of Speed Racer reflects on the technological processes behind the illusion of motion and cel animation. Specifically, the video looks at how Speed Racer's visual design reproduces what Thomas Lamarre calls "animetism," a style of representing motion specific to anime." Books discussed: Thomas Lamarre's The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation.]

Scout Tafoya [Astoria, Queens, NY based film critic's video essay website.]

ScreenAnarchy ["Founded in September of 2004 with a great plan to write about the international, independent and cult film beloved by founder Todd Brown, but largely neglected by the online film community of the time, ScreenAnarchy has gone on to become an industry's leading resource for films from around the globe. ScreenAnarchy is one of the most read film websites in the entire world and has become daily reading for festival programmers, film producers, film buyers, and tens of thousands of fans every day who share Mr. Brown's belief that there's no point in talking about the same five films that every other site in the world is talking about."]

Screened. "What is an Allegorical Movie?" (Posted on Youtube: April 9, 2021) ["In our second Film Club theme we wanted to dive into the niche world of cinematic allegories. This literary device is a great tool to explore serval concepts in a more approachable manner. We will show how they are made and why by analyzing the following movies: Snowpiercer (2013) by Bong Joon-ho, The Lobster (2015) by Yorgos Lanthimos, and The Seventh Seal (1957) by Ingmar Bergman."]

Screening the Past [Australia: Screening the Past is concerned with: the history of photography, film, television and multimedia; the representation of history on/in these media;
the role of these media in social history; the history and development of critical and theoretical analysis in these areas. It publishes material of interest to historians of film and media, to film and media scholars, to social historians interested in the place of film and media within general history, to film makers interested in the history of their craft or in representing history through their productions, to film and media librarians and archivists."]

See Hear [The hosts are in Australia, UK and Hong Kong: "See Hear is a monthly podcast dedicated to the discussion of musically themed films - narratives or documentaries."]

Seitz, Matt Zoller. "The Wes Anderson Collection, Parts 1 - 7." Roger Ebert (October 14 - 25, 2013)


Selveraj, Nila. "Humor Destabilizing Power in The Favourite and The Death of Stalin." The Best Pictures Project (May 8, 2020)

Senses of Cinema ["Senses of Cinema is an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. We believe cinema is an art that can take many forms, from the industrially-produced blockbuster to the hand-crafted experimental work; we also aim to encourage awareness of the histories of such diverse forms. As an Australian-based journal, we have a special commitment to the regular, wide-ranging analysis and critique of Australian cinema, past and present. Senses of Cinema is primarily concerned with ideas about particular films or bodies of work, but also with the regimes (ideological, economic and so forth) under which films are produced and viewed, and with the more abstract theoretical and philosophical issues raised by film study. As well, we believe that a cinephilic understanding of the moving image provides the necessary basis for a radical critique of other media and of the global “image culture”. We are open to a range of critical approaches (auteurist, formalist, psychoanalytic, humanist…) and encourage contributors to experiment with different forms of writing (personal memoir, academic essay, journalistic report, poetic evocation…)."]

Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule [Glendale, CA: Dennis Cozzalio and Thom McGregor in-depth writings on films.]

Seventh Row [Canadian podcast: "Visit Seventh Row to revel in the afterglow of outstanding, under-the-radar cinema. Through in-depth interviews and well-researched essays, we demystify the myriad technical choices behind films we love. Every three months, we release an ebook bringing together thoughtful criticism about a film, filmmaker or topic. There are no prerequisites to loving movies. We write for curious newcomers and experienced cinephiles, alike."]

Sheila O'Malley [Archive of her film criticism at Film Comment.]

Skiveren, Nicolai. "Cinematic Waesthetic: Wasted Worlds, Wasted Lives and Becoming-Waste in Contemporary Science Fiction Film." Revenant #10 (March 2024) ["This article explores the aesthetic, affective, and epistemological connections that bind together science fiction (SF) as a genre of cognitive estrangement, and the varied forms of waste that have come to permeate the genre’s filmic depictions of the future. Whether it be in the shadowy alleyways of Blade Runner 2049 (2017), the shantytowns of District 9 (2009), or the ravaged environments of Idiocracy (2006), waste is always there, lurking in the background, enveloping its human and nonhuman subjects with its elusive yet distinct atmosphere. And yet, it remains unclear what purpose(s), if any, waste might serve within these film-worlds. Because despite the seemingly central place that waste occupies in our cultural imaginaries of the future, no one has yet presented a systematic reflection on its affective, symbolic, and narrative significance. This article therefore brings together writings on ecological SF (Caravan 2014) and critical waste studies (Bauman 2004; Hawkins 2005; Viney 2014) to scrutinize the waste found across the above SF films. The article proposes that waste in contemporary SF film can be seen to operate mainly within three overlapping modes: ‘Wasted worlds,’ ‘Wasted lives,’ and ‘Becoming-waste.’ Drawing especially on Adrian Ivakhiv’s tripartite model for an eco-philosophy of the cinema, this article calls attention to the often subtle ways in which waste participates in (i) cinematic world-building, (ii) representations of otherness, and (iii) depictions of radical forms of change. Taken together, these three modes represent a suggestive image of how waste forms part of contemporary SF film."]

"Special Dossier on Ema (PABLO LARRAÍN 2019)." Mediático (October 26, 2020)  ["... we are delighted to publish an extensive and much-needed special dossier on Pablo Larraín’s Ema (2019), guest edited by Dunja Fehimović, that fills the critical lacunae left by English language press summations of the film. In six excellent and thought provoking posts that range from an exploration of the film’s political engagement and resonances in Larraín’s contemporary Chile and across Latin America, to Cuban audience reactions to its foregrounding of reggaeton, the authors of this special dossier situate Ema firmly within the very specific context of its cultural production."]

Stevens, Kyle, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory. Oxford University Press, 2022. ["Despite changes in the media landscape, film remains a vital force in contemporary culture, as do our ideas of what "a movie" or "the cinematic" are. Indeed, we might say that the category of film now only exists in theory. Whereas film-theoretical discussion at the turn of the 21st century was preoccupied, understandably, by digital technology's permeation of virtually all aspects of the film object, this volume moves the conversation away from a focus on film's materiality towards timely questions concerning the ethics, politics, and even aesthetics of thinking about the medium of cinema. To put it another way, this collection narrows in on the subject of film, not with a nostalgic sensibility, but with the recognition that what constitutes a film is historically contingent, in dialogue with the vicissitudes of entertainment, art, and empire. The volume is divided into six sections: Meta-Theory; Film Theory's Project of Emancipation; Apparatus and Perception; Audiovisuality;How Close is Close Reading?; and The Turn to Experience."]

StudioBinder. "Denis Villeneuve & His Cinema of Ambiguity — Directing Styles Explained." (Posted on Youtube: April 6, 2020) ["Denis Villeneuve movies are made to confuse you. At every opportunity — in the story, in the cinematography, editing, and music, Villeneuve wants to keep you guessing. Watching Denis Villeneuve movies is to be placed in an environment of uncertainty. And that’s what makes them so interesting. In films like Enemy, Prisoners, Polytechnique, Blade Runner 2049, and Arrival, Villeneuve consistently creates awe and wonder with images and sounds we’ve never seen before. In Enemy, Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) must confront the possibility that he is more than a single person. In Sicario, Kate (Emily Blunt) is pushed into the world of drug cartels by a tight-lipped company man (Josh Brolin) and a near-silent assassin (Benicio Del Toro). In Prisoners, Keller (Hugh Jackman) ventures into murky moral territory to find his kidnapped daughter. In Arrival, Louise (Amy Adams) and Ian (Jeremy Renner) are tasked with bridging the communication gap between beings from another dimension. In all these movies, the characters find themselves in new worlds without answers. In this video, we’ve cracked the code on Villeneuve’s love of ambiguity and we explain how his directing style works across 7 areas of focus including sound, color, production design, and more. Villeneuve creates movies that can be enigmatic but there’s no denying that he is a film artist in complete control of his medium. If you’re studying directing, cinematography, editing, or pursuing ANY career in filmmaking, there are a ton of lessons to be learned from Denis Villeneuve. This is the ultimate breakdown of Denis Villeneuve’s directing style."]



Subtext and Symbolism. "Dead Man Analysis: Why is William Blake in Purgatory?"  (posted on Youtube: April 21, 2016)

Supporting Characters [Podcast that features long conversations with those involved in the critical culture surrounding film culture.]

Tafoya, Scout. "The Unloved, Pt. 93: The Empty Man." Roger Ebert (September 1, 2021) ["Whatever else is true of David Prior, "The Empty Man" is one of the most promising debuts in the last several years of American cinema. I greatly look forward to what he concocts next, whether I agree with its thesis or not. I enjoyed that while watching "The Empty Man" I was guessing the entire time what would happen next, and in every case I was proven wrong. That is rare enough without factoring in his considerable formal abilities. I like this movie a lot, and I’m ready for Halloween to get here so we can all kvetch about our shared need to be scared by the unreal instead of the very real."]

---. "Wake Up! - Matrix: Resurrections." (Posted on Patreon: January 9, 2022)

The Take. "The Asexual Asian Man - End the Undesirable Stereotype." (Posted on Youtube: August 12, 2021) ["Asian male characters in film and TV have long been sidelined, emasculated, and denied the chance to have romantic or sexual relationships -- that’s when they’re not openly mocked. In an inverse of the trend of fetishizing Asian women through the “lotus blossom” trope, Asian men are consistently desexualized onscreen. This has directly led to the damaging, widespread perception in US society that Asian men are less masculine or sexually desirable, so it’s more important than ever to move past it."]

---. "A History of Black Stereotypes." (July 21, 2020) ["The grotesque racist caricatures that were used to justify slavery and the systemic mistreatment of black people found their way into our earliest blockbuster movies, and they remained popular onscreen for decades. In large part, this is because—while black characters have always been a part of American films—black filmmakers and performers tended to be excluded from their creation. If we look closer, many caricatures like the Mammy, Uncle Tom, Sapphire, Jezebel, and Magical Negro have persevered, in some form, to this day across our modern films and TV. Here’s our Take on the history of black stereotypes on screen and how they still influence our society—more than you might think."]

---. "The Crazy Woman Trope, Explained." (Posted on Youtube: April 23, 2020) ["Our screens are full of “Crazy Women” - but are they actually crazy? Are these women legitimate threats to themselves and others, or do they deserve more empathy than they’re given credit for? In this video we delve into the different types of “Crazy” Women and what’s problematic about Hollywood’s depiction of mental illness."]

---. "The Gay Best Friend - How It Became a Stereotype." (Posted on Youtube: Aptil 1, 2021) ["In the history of mainstream cinema, LGBT characters have mostly existed in the margins. They've been the supporting characters, rarely the lead, and for a long time they weren’t even allowed to exist openly. Nothing exemplifies this marginalization better than the trope of the Gay Best Friend. As increasingly nuanced queer characters have emerged, the Gay Best Friend looks more and more like the product of a different era. Here’s our Take on the history of the Gay Best Friend, and why we need to expect more for this character in the 21st century."]

---. "How Film & TV Misrepresented Neurodiversity." (Posted on Youtube: July 10, 2021)

---. "The Incredibles Symbolism: The Power of Family." (Posted on Youtube: December 14, 2016)

---. "The Jewish American Princess - Beyond the Stereotype." (Posted on Youtube: February 25, 2021)

---. "The Lotus Blossom Stereotype - Dangers of the Asian Fetish." (Posted on Youtube: June 2, 2021) ["Asian women are highly fetishized in our society, especially by white men, and one of the roots of this problem is the “lotus blossom” stereotype -- also known as “china doll” or “Geisha Girl.” The Lotus Blossom trope portrays Asian women onscreen as objects of desire, but ones which are disposable. They’re lusted after only as long as they continue to project traits like obedience, subservience, and a baby-like lack of agency or individuality. Here’s our Take on how the Lotus Blossom trope fetishizes Asian women -- with dangerous real-world consequences."]

---. "The Magical Minority Trope is Still a Problem." (Posted on Youtube: August 5, 2021) ["The Magical Minority trope has been widely condemned for its racist undertones and problematic takeaways -- yet to this day it’s strangely difficult to get rid of. It involves a person of color existing in a film or TV show seemingly just to serve the heroic endeavors of the white protagonist. The Magical Minority uses a special “gift” they possess, whether it's mystical connection to the supernatural, hyper-intelligence in a specific area, or an exceptional talent. And they apparently expect little to nothing in return besides the satisfaction of helping the white person find themselves. The Magical Minority actually stems from fake progressivism and a surface attempt to create “positive” media representation of people of color. But given the realities of race in America, this trope is a white writer’s fantasy. It soothes white guilt by providing white audiences with sympathetic white protagonists to see themselves in, without having to shift focus away from the white character’s experience. And it depicts people of color as helpers or servers, instead of as whole, autonomous people with their own dreams and goals."]

---. "The Model Minority Trope, Explained." (Posted on Youtube: August 22, 2020)

---. "The Redhead Onscreen | How We Respond To Difference." (Posted on Youtube: July 29, 2021) ["Redheads onscreen have long fallen into two camps: fetishized or ostracized. Typically, this dividing line comes down to gender. Redheaded women, like Jessica Rabbit, are portrayed as hyper-sexual vixens; while redheaded men, like Napoleon Dynamite, are presented as undesirable outcasts. These narrow portrayals put redhead characters into limiting boxes that can be othering and even dehumanizing. Because red is the rarest hair color, the redhead has historically been used as a visual symbol of differentness. Digging deeper into onscreen portrayals of redheads, we can better understand our culture’s responses to difference in general. Moreover, this ostracization-and-fetishization dichotomy exposes how our prejudices can manifest in media."]

---. "The Spicy Latina Trope, Explained." (Posted on Youtube: November 10, 2020)

---. "The Wire: Omar Little - A Man Got to Have a Code." (Posted on Youtube: October 14, 2018)

Talkhouse: Film ["Talkhouse is a media company and outlet for musicians, actors, filmmakers, and others in their respective fields. Artists write essays and criticism from firsthand perspectives, speak one-on-one with their peers via the Talkhouse Podcast and Talkhouse Live events, and offer readers and listeners unique insight into creative work of all genres and generations. In short— Talkhouse is writing and conversations about music and film, from the people who make them."]

Thomas, Burley. "Horror Place Tropes." (Posted on Youtube: November 11, 2020)

Torchin, Leshu. "Themed Playlist: The Female Gaze." Screen Culture (April 8, 2020) ["... a female gaze. This is a term often used as counterpoint to the male gaze, a term introduced by Laura Mulvey but which has enjoyed considerable escape velocity into popular culture. Whilst the male gaze centres a male spectator to identify with an active male protagonist in stories that speak to him, and which render female figures little more than an object or narrative device, a female gaze intervenes and expands and shatters this framework. A female gaze centres women and their desires. A female gaze can wilfully displace the male gaze that derives pleasure from but refuses the agency of women on screen."]

The Video Essay [Will DiGravio's "monthly (sometimes twice a month) show dedicated to discussion of the theory and practice of videographic criticism. Most episodes features a one-on-one interview with leading practitioners of the form, including critics, scholars, and filmmakers."]

Viewfinder. "The Importance of Hands in Film." (Posted on Youtube: January 24, 2017)

"Weird Studies & Monster Theory." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Online Archive)

What's So Great About That? "Phantom You [Tube]: Fighting Our Digital Doubles." (Posted on Youtube: March 14, 2019) ["With our online and offline lives becoming increasingly connected, to what extent do we create our own other? And to what effect? Since the 1990s, horror and sci-fi have considered how we might create our own worst enemy - and the friendly face of this dystopian future is yours."]

Whitelaw, Joshua. "Everything is Permitted: A Study of Nicolas Roeg." (Posted on Vimeo: 2013)

Wiggins, Steven A. "Nightmares with the Bible: The Good Book and Cinematic Demons (Horror and Scripture, 2020)." New Books in Biblical Studies (April 27, 2022) ["Nightmares with the Bible: The Good Book and Cinematic Demons (2021) published by Fortress Academic views demons through two lenses: that of western religion and that of cinema. Sketching out the long fear of demons in western history, including the Bible, Steve A. Wiggins moves on to analyze how popular movies inform our beliefs about demonic forces. Beginning with the idea of possession, he explores the portrayal of demons from ancient Mesopotamia and the biblical world (including in select extra-biblical texts), and then examines the portrayal of demons in popular horror franchises The Conjuring, The Amityville Horror, and Paranormal Activity. In the final chapter, Wiggins looks at movies that followed The Exorcist and offers new perspectives for viewing possession and exorcism. Written in non-technical language, this book is intended for anyone interested in how demons are perceived and how popular culture informs those perceptions."]

You Have Been Watching Films. "Dogtooth - Satire Without Spoon-Feeding." (Posted on Youtube: June 14, 2019)

You Must Remember This ["You Must Remember This is the podcast dedicated to exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century."]

Zoom Out [Montreal, Canada based Francophone online magazine: "Zoom Out is a film platform conceived as an extension of its sister sites Hors champ and Offscreen, which will nurture the confluence of artistic and critical practice in the shape of new forms of film criticism (audio-visual essays, podcasts, sound projects, cine-concerts, interviews, etc.). Alongside these new forms of film criticism which continue to be shaped by evolving digital technology and image & sound manipulation software, Zoom Out aims to explore and promote the vast potential for research creation in the Montreal/Quebec/Canada sector by showcasing forms of film expression which have the most to gain from the continuing democratization of filmmaking, distribution and exhibition (short films, experimental cinema, essay film, documentary, video essays, cine-concerts)."]


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