Featured Writing

What China's Airports Tell Us About China

"In the end, the contrasts between the startlingly modern structures and the terrible amenities and processes within them stand as a stark symbol of modern China. China is indeed modernizing quickly. It plows ahead with monumental displays of its ascent like the Three Gorges Dam, the Beijing Olympics, or, well, Beijing Capital Airport. And yet, it’s also clear that there is a lack of consideration for the individual in this ascent. There is a lack of information and a lack of attention to simple details that we take for granted, like clear signage and comprehensible processes. Seemingly simple and obvious things are not easy to accomplish and rules and regulations are not clear."

First Published on blogcritics.org, January 2012

Ghost in the Shell - Body Anxiety: Japan's Philosophy of Body and Soul

"This worldview partially explains why Japan didn’t legalize the harvesting of organs of brain dead donors until 1997. To the Western eye, a brain dead body is no longer a person; it’s simply a mechanism without an operator. In Japan, a brain dead person, still warm to the touch, still breathing and digesting and salivating, remains a person. The person is not deceased when some scientific criterion is met but rather when society is ready to admit that he’s passed away. Removing an organ from this body is tantamount to removing a part of what constitutes an individual."

Published on The Cinessential, July 2016

Local Hero - A Remedy for Loneliness

"Of course loneliness and isolation have existed for thousands of years, but modernity, with all of its wealth and technology, accentuates it. When we’re given the opportunity to interact only with whom we please, we tend to shrink back into ourselves. We become less like the inhabitants of Ferness and more like MacIntyre and Happer. We become people that search increasingly desperately for meaning in a world where we don’t feel we belong. While the effects of this phenomenon are yearning and ennui in Local Hero, the real world impact may be much darker. Read many of the reports on the rash of terrorism and mass murder we’ve seen over the past few months and you’ll see repeatedly that the perpetrators felt isolated by their societies.”

Published on The Cinessential, August 2016

The River - Adolescence and Deeper Truths

"And so, on this particularly terrible week, The River made me realize that I’d trapped myself in a nightmare constructed out of the ambitions of my clients at work. I was running so hard in a desperate attempt to dream someone else’s dream. While my stress mounted, the weather was unseasonably warm. An occasional cool breeze hinted at fall. The coffee was hot and earthy. I could get cozy on the couch in the evening with a wife who loves me. I could walk through my neighborhood and enjoy the last days of greenery before autumn turns everything into brilliant shades of red and gold. Even as request piled on request and deadlines loomed, the real world continued to flow, just the way it always had. All I needed to do was take a deep breath and look. I could awake from this phantasm to find reality."

Published on The Cinessential, September 2016

The Poseidon Adventure and the Aesthetic Dangers Facing Cinema

"Cinema, like all art, walks a razor’s edge between the arcane ideals of its elites and the desire of the movie going public to lose themselves in the creativity of others. My own tendency, after spending years watching cinema, is to align with the tastes of the elite. I want more P.T. Anderson. I want more Jean Renoir. But I must recognize that overindulging the elitist streak of cinema risks consigning it to the kind of irrelevance that arguably plagues contemporary classical music and art. The fact is, the populist streak of cinema is just as valuable as it’s elitist one. A movie that honestly cares for all people like The Poseidon Adventure or Star Wars: Episode IV should elicit as much respect as 2001: A Space Odyssey or Tokyo Story. Without people to speak for the value of both sides of cinema, there is no cinema at all. Instead, we’re left with anti-films like Grown Ups 2 which exist only to serve the financial interests of their creators."

Published on The Cinessential, November 2016

A Cultural Guide to Tampopo

"Filmed over 30 years ago and halfway across the world, Tampopo still appeals to all audiences. It has humor. It has drama. It has social commentary. It’s a movie that stands astride the globe, plastering smiles on people of all creeds and cultures. One could walk into Tampopo without any knowledge of Japanese food or culture and walk away satiated."

Published on The Cinessential, January 2017

Withnail & I - An Introduction

"Withnail & I starts with an elegy. As the film opens viewers are greeted with the melancholy tones of saxophone virtuoso King Curtis’ instrumental cover of Procol Haram’s A Whiter Shade of Pale. A week after this rendition of the song was released, King Curtis was stabbed to death outside his apartment. Even though he doesn’t know it, King Curtis, in this wistful tune is memorializing himself. And in some sense, the entirety of Withnail & I is an elegy for the frivolity of youth. Underneath the trenchant dialog and the trivial plot, this film remains one of the most poignant portraits of that moment in late adolescence where the hard truths of adult reality catch up with the dreams and aspirations of the young."

Published on The Cinessential, February 2017

Mon Oncle and Jacques Tati's Criticism of Modern Architecture

"Over the past few decades globalization has created a new, global culture, which for better or worse, has eroded local mores. The most clearly visible manifestation of this trend might be architecture. Those glassy towers with their austere exteriors and Barcelona chairs in the lobby are the same in every city. Anywhere in the world, I can find the same building full of the same furniture with the same companies inhabiting them and selling the same products."

Published on The Cinessential, June 2017

Featured Writing

What China's Airports Tell Us About China

Ghost in the Shell - Body Anxiety: Japan's Philosophy of Body and Soul

Local Hero - A Remedy for Loneliness

The River - Adolescence and Deeper Truths

The Poseidon Adventure and the Aesthetic Dangers Facing Cinema

A Cultural Guide to Tampopo

Withnail & I - An Introduction

Mon Oncle and Jacques Tati's Criticism of Modern Architecture

Other Writing

Film Review - Green Room

My Neighbor Totoro's Bittersweet Charm

Film Review - Sing Street

Harlan County, USA - History of the Heart: The Music of Harlan County

Local Hero - An Introduction

Intolerance - History Repeating Itself

Movie Review - Easter Parade

The Magnificent Seven - First Viewing

Is the Original Halloween Still Scary?

Network - An Introduction

Tampopo - An Introduction

Movie Review - Silence

Is 'In the Mood for Love' the 21st Century's Best Film?

Beauty and the Beast - True Magic of the Modern Fairy Tale

Movie Review - Jafar Panahi's Taxi

Children of Men - An Introduction

Movie Review - District 9

Badlands in Context - Cinematic Psychopathy

Yankee Doodle Dandy - Cynicism vs Patriotism