IN A LONELY PLACE…(The Films of Mike Leigh & Kelly Reichardt)

A fun film festival programming assignment that encouraged us to make connections between director Mike Leigh’s work and another director of our choice! INTRODUCTION It’s all about those long-drawn-out silences. Or the never-ending rambles. People’s desire to connect but their inability to do so is a reality that humanist filmmakers consistently tap into to understand […]

Suspense AND Surprise in The Conversation (1973)

This academic paper conducts a formal analysis Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1973), extensively focusing on its cinematography and editing. Major Spoilers ahead. In his infamous interview with filmmaker and critic François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock details the critical difference between eliciting surprise and suspense from an audience. Using the “bomb under the table” analogy, the […]

Glass (2019)

Minor spoilers for Unbreakable (2000), Split (2016), and Glass (2018).  Films based on comic books tend to gravitate towards displaying a sense of grandiosity on screen. Even the supposedly more grounded blockbusters, like Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight Trilogy,” exaggerated certain aspects of filmmaking, like the actors’ performances, the visual scope of the action scenes, and […]

Children of Men (2006)

This is an academic paper on the thematic, historical, and scene analysis of Alfonso Cuaron’s modern sci-fi masterpiece. Major spoilers ahead. French philosopher, Paul Virilio, emphasizes that the world’s collapse is going to come about due to the exponential growth of technology. Virilio’s philosophy aligns perfectly with Hollywood science-fiction dystopian classics like The Day the […]