'The little funny man’s significance to the screen is roughly that of Shakespeare to playwriting'
The best film writing we read the week of March 30 - April 3
As we’re all still adjusting to the idea of endlessly watching movies to take our minds off of the sickness and death raging outside, it was surprising to find that not everything was doom and gloom. I mean, everything is definitely tinged with sadness and fear, but there was some delightful and smart writing that is worth diving into.
The New Yorker’s Richard Brody delights in Rotten Tomatoes’ unearthing of noteworthy film criticisms lost to time. I found one small sampling from a review by a black, teenage critic who wrote in the 30s and 40s, to be particularly ticklish and astute.
Reviewing Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” in the April 10, 1941, issue—he was still a teen-ager—Kinloch wrote, “The little funny man’s significance to the screen is roughly that of Shakespeare to playwriting, da Vinci to painting or Jim Farley to party politics.”
Vox’s Constance Grady provides a French grammar lesson that reveals an intimacy in Portrait of a Lady on Fire that is hidden to English speaking audiences.
In French, to transition between calling someone vous and calling them tu — moving from a position of formality to a position of intimacy — is called tutoyer. But in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, it takes a very long time for that transition ever to come.
BuzzFeed News’ Krystie Lee Yandoli asks herself why she only wants to binge-watch apocalypse films. Turns out it has something to do with “terror management theory.”
“The theory basically says that all of us are scared out of our minds that our lives are limited and we will die one day, and it's not something we like to think about,” Scott said. “So I think in a moment of a pandemic, people want to escape.”
Vice’s Alex Zaragoza spoke with Jesse Eisenberg, Imogen Poots, and director Lorcan Finnegan about Vivarium, a horror film about being trapped at home.
It's hard to argue that our real world doesn't feel a bit like a horror film, and Vivarium explores many of the realities we as a society are currently experiencing. Tom and Gemma are confined in their home, going stir crazy and counting the days of their captivity. They wake up, eat breakfast, putter around, try to find an escape route, eat more, go to bed, and do it all again the next day. They struggle mentally and physically to find a way out of their nightmare, and to even understand what is happening around them. It's dark and invisible, and a threat. It all sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it?
The Ringer’s Adam Nayman reviews Never Rarely Sometimes Always, a subtle meditation on a Pennsylvania teenager’s quest to get an abortion.
On some level, Never Rarely Sometimes Always is intended as a critique of both a health-care system and a sociocultural mind-set that keeps throwing obstacles in Autumn’s way, but it never descends into a polemic.
AV Club’s Tom Breihan remembers how most decisions in The Return of the Jedi were made to sell more toys.
Eight years after the official end of the Vietnam War, George Lucas turned the Viet Cong into adorable teddy bears that could be used to sell toys.
Finally, over at The Ringer, punk singer Elizabeth Nelson recommends watching Richard Linklater’s ode to baseball for anyone missing sports.
We’re here to talk about Everybody Wants Some!!, Linklater’s unabashedly horny, open-hearted 2016 feature about teamwork, tail-chasing, and the enduring mysteries of the starting pitcher’s mind.
Also: this thread is good(ish).
