Peering into the Past to Reveal the Future: Past Lives’ Editing Techniques
By Sydney Speckmann. Keith Fraase was the editor of Past Lives. As a repeat contributor with director Celine Song, he also was the editor for her more recent film, Materialists (2025). Fraase has edited episodes for several TV Mini Series, such as Naomi Osaka (2021) and Amend: The Fight for America (2021). One of his…
Professional Son: A Director’s Introspective
By Lana Tania. PROFESSIONAL SON was born out of my own upbringing in Jakarta, Indonesia, where I attended a private international prep school and was surrounded by the comically wealthy heirs of Southeast Asian old-money dynasties. I wasn’t nearly as wealthy as many of my peers, but I inevitably got swept into their world: birthday…
Candybox: A Director’s Introspective
By Layth Handoush. CANDYBOX is a story familiar to the journalists in Palestine and the U.S. who have dared to report the truth of the Palestinian Genocide. As a Palestinian-American journalist and activist, I was struck by the power of media bias to villainize Palestinians (and all oppressed people/counter-narrators). After receiving death threats for supporting…
Things You Leave Behind: A Director’s Introspective
By Kate Mathews. THINGS YOU LEAVE BEHIND is a film on how love lingers past its expiration date. It is an exploration into the perseverance of love beyond the bounds of a relationship: The items that remind you of fond memories once shared with someone close, and the care that lingers even when you no…
“Laura is the One”: An Analysis of the Evolving Incarnations of Laura Palmer Throughout the Twin Peaks Saga
By Leeann Remiker. Laura Palmer is at the epicenter of Twin Peaks, the sun around which it revolves, and thethematic core of the saga’s ethos. David Lynch’s Twin Peaks is a haunting mystery meditating ontrauma, identity, and the representation of female trauma. Across the original television series (which aired from 1990-1991), the prequel film Fire…
Gay Characters, Straight Oscar Nominees
Leeann Remiker Jodie Foster and Colman Domingo made history last month for their Oscar nominations for their respective roles as lesbian swimming coach Bonnie Stoll in Nyad and Bayard Rustin in Rustin, marking the first time two openly gay actors were Oscar-nominated for playing gay characters. According to The New York Times, Ian McKellen was the…
Why I’m Still Thinking About Tracy Chapman’s Grammy Performance: A Deep Dive into her Career, Legacy, and Timeless Message
Leeann Remiker Tracy Chapman, legendary Black folk artist and creator of hits such as “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” and “Baby Can I Hold You,” ended a nearly two-decades-long performing hiatus and took to the Grammys stage on Sunday, Feb. 4. Chapman and country artist Luke Combs brought the house down with their rendition of Chapman’s…
Civil Rights as B Plot in 2023 Television
Leeann Remiker Tread lightly, major spoilers for “Daisy Jones and the Six”, “Fellow Travelers”, and “Lessons in Chemistry” ahead. As a certified nerd who watches everything nominated for each year’s Emmys, I noticed a trend of tokenized black representation in last season’s Limited Series category. In hit shows like Amazon’s 70’s rock band drama “Daisy…
“Hoop Dreams” 30 Year Later: What We Should Still Be Learning from this Revelatory Documentary
Leeann Remiker 11.8 million dollar gross. Winner of the Audience Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. The closing night film at the ‘94 New York Film Festival. Two thumbs up from legendary critic Roger Elbert, who heralded the film as a piece that “takes us, shakes us, and makes us think in new ways about…
Mise-En-Scene in Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon
Khaleesa Alexander The film Dog Day Afternoon starring actor Al Pacino is a film that centers around the character Sonny and his friend Sal as they attempt to rob a bank. Though the film initially seems like a story centered around the action of a robbery, it soon becomes apparent that the dynamics of Sonny…
Long Live the New Flesh
Ella Christiansen RATED: R Abstract As novel technologies like the internet and affordable camcorders increased the cinematic visibility of queer sex, democratized media-making destabilized heteronormative definitions of sex and demanded a fluid cultural reimagination of sexuality. Through the lens of genre cinema, queer artists reinterpret cybernetic monsters, or the intermingling of living and mechanical systems,…
Love Streams and Cassavettes’ Dreams
Joshua Zhao John Cassavetes’ penultimate directorial effort, Love Streams (1984), culminates his stylistic and thematic essence into a lasting homage to his own philosophy. The story pulses and sways as the two siblings, Sarah Lawson (Gena Rowlands) and Robert Harmon (John Cassavetes), live out their tumultuous lives filled with conflict, yearning, and love. As Sarah…
The Evolution of Rape-Revenge Horror Exemplified by The Nightingale
Ella Christiansen Amidst a brutal press tour where filmmakers behind IFC’s 2018 film The Nightingale were poked, prodded, and pushed to defend their employment of sexual violence in the film, the team stood tall in defense of their vision. Lead actress, 25-year-old Aisling Franciosi became emotional speaking about the rightfully-visceral toll of her film’s rape…
Theda Bara – A Fool and a Vampire
Ella Christiansen Theda Bara was born to a French artist and his Arabian mistress in the sands of the Sahara. As she matured beneath the shadow of the great Sphynx, she developed a set of intuitions and wicked capabilities that could only be described, even by the most skeptical of critics, as occult (Smith) (Picture…
A Peep at the Evolution of Mystery Television
Ella Christiansen INTRODUCTION I have watched some of the most gratuitously violent, bone-chillingly terrifying movies I can find on the internet. So much so that it remains a miracle that http://www.effedupmovies.com has not given me a computer virus. I’ve been nothing but rewarded for this masochistic habit. Namechecking genre film deep-cuts has won me everything…
Atlantique’s Haunt Frames
Ella Christiansen If ontology is the study of existence and being, hauntology is the radical study of absence and non-being. With no future to turn to, memories fill the present with the ache and yearning of a ghost, a lost lover never laid to rest. Mati Diop’s 2019 Cannes Grand Prix winner Atlantiques explores hauntology…
The Evolution of Technology in Film
Sydney Speckmann Technology in film has advanced as the technology in our society has advanced. From what was once a pipe-dream to tech as it exists now, we must re-situate ourselves into the context of how this can be processed; as it is often seen with polar streams of affection and aversion alike in film.…
Flores de Otro Mundo: The Fonts of the Patriarchy
Sydney Speckmann In Santa Eulalia, there was a decline in jobs and young people, due to the draw of the bigger cities surrounding it. In an effort to combat this, the men of the town put together an excursion to bus in Spanish and Dominican women to their town, all for the prospect of love…
Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat: Gender and WWII
In the film Lifeboat, Alfred Hithcock personifies the roles available for women in World War II through the closed setting of a lifeboat lost at sea. The three female characters: Connie Porter, Alice MacKenzie, and Mrs. Higley portray more typical female occupations, with the exception of Mrs. Porter, who is a journalist, Alice and Mrs.…
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