Partway through John Michael McDonagh’s film Calvary, Father James (Brendan Gleeson), a county priest in a small town in Ireland, encounters a young girl on the road. Continue reading Calvary: A Good Priest is Hard to Find
Gone Girl: Less Than Meets the Eye
Gone Girl, much like its characters, puts on a false front. It has all the trappings of a sleek psychological thriller and the heart of a confused dark comedy. If you believe deeply in the hellishness of marriage, or suburbia, it might hit close to home. But for the lucky few who don’t, this movie offers little more than a twisted, and sometimes fun, ride into absurdity. Continue reading Gone Girl: Less Than Meets the Eye
Lawless Lawyers: Murder is the Best of the (Il)legal
Confession Time: Law does not interest me. In fact, I’d be more likely to gouge my eyeballs than watch a legal procedural show (then again, both are essentially the same thing). Murder, however, does interest me. I suppose that, with a title like How to Get Away with Murder, it’s the best of both worlds.
Continue reading Lawless Lawyers: Murder is the Best of the (Il)legal
Before the Dawn: A Look Back at One of Sci-Fi’s Great Franchises
One month ago, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes came out to impressive critical acclaim—and has made a lot of money. Few were more excited than I, and in anticipation I took a look back at some of the franchise’s earlier works. I won’t review Pierre Boulle’s original 1963 novel (frankly, the films are much more interesting), I haven’t read the comic book adaptations, and I’ve yet to view the 70s TV shows. But I’ve now seen all eight films and I want to share that with you.
Continue reading Before the Dawn: A Look Back at One of Sci-Fi’s Great Franchises
Blackfish: Fear and Loving in Orlando
It would be dishonest for me to review Blackfish, a recent documentary about an orca at Sea World, without first disclosing my history with the park.
Elena: Grieving Memory
In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder outlines a myth concerning the origin of painting. A young woman, to preserve the memory of her departing lover, traces the outline of his shadow against a wall. While they are separated, the image will stand in his place; or more precisely, it will be forever linked to the woman’s memory of their relationship. That is to say, despite the illusion of permanence the image is fluid, inconstant, elusive.
Elena is the result of director Petra Costa’s exploration of memory through image, of the pains and joys of remembering something deeply intimate and yet just out of reach: the mind of a loved one. Part elegy, part essay, part documentary, and part missive, the premise is beautiful and the film has real moments of grace. Elena is difficult to categorize; but we don’t have to.
The “Coming of Age” of Coming-of-Age Films
Why aren’t we seeing movies about growing up in the twenty first century? Has film lost its ability to convey a collective experience? How does film hold up in an age of television and Internet? Rebecca, Ryohei, and Parth ponder the fate of traditional coming-of-age films and where the genre might be headed in the future.
Always Fresh, Never Frozen: An Instant Disney Classic
Frozen melts away the malaise that plagued Disney animation for over a decade. The film launches itself into the highest ranks of animated classics not by repeating the classic Disney formula for success, but by breaking free and charting its own course. Honest treatment of mature themes sparks the magic of Frozen, allowing the story to engender characters with whom the audience can empathize.
Continue reading Always Fresh, Never Frozen: An Instant Disney Classic
Anniversary: Schindler’s List, A Human Triumph
This review comes on the heels of Schindler’s List’s 20th anniversary, but the impact of the film hasn’t diminished one bit in the interim. On the contrary, Spielberg’s most highly regarded film is more essential now than it’s ever been, as cinema becomes more technologically savvy, more commercialized, more data-driven, and film narrative becomes increasingly meta-referential, schizophrenically fast-paced, and reluctant to simply present art at face value.
Continue reading Anniversary: Schindler’s List, A Human Triumph
A Taste of Their Own Meta-Cine
A new type of hyper-aware genre entertainment seems to be emerging of late. Call it “meta-genre,” or “meta-cine”: films, as well as television shows, that self-consciously invite us to reflect on the conventions of genre itself. Is it parody, or is it more? Paul Popescu and Dayton Martindale examine why it might be good to take our new meta-cine.
Bad Men, Mad Women
Our television schedules have always been packed with crazy characters, but recently there’s been an uptick in characters with diagnosed crazy. Television shows that feature mentally ill characters have recently been receiving a lot of positive attention from critics, experts, and audiences alike. Many have identified this growth in depictions of mentally ill characters, and most pieces on the topic have been congratulatory, and in some sense, rightly so: some of these shows have been doing an excellent job of portraying mental illness accurately. But for all the good that real, human portrayals of mental illness on TV can do, this trend is troubling on a whole different level. Looking at the array of mentally ill characters on TV right now and in recent years, it’s impossible not to notice that the majority of them are female.
Dean’s Date
We know we’re all media junkies, but what about Princeton’s fearless leaders? Does running a university keep them busy around-the-clock, or do they still have time to binge-watch the latest season of Breaking Bad?
The Buffer editors decided to find out and made a date with the Deans, inviting three university administrators to join us in a conversation about their film and television likes and dislikes: David Dobkin (Dean of the Faculty and Phillip Y. Goldman ’86 Professor of Computer Science), Valerie Smith (Dean of the College and the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature), and Tara Kinsey (Associate Dean at the Office of the Dean of the College and the Office of the Vice Presidentfor Campus Life). Their candid answers to our questions about their viewing habits may surprise you, as they did us!