In the first installment of To the Nines, a series of articles surveying interesting films from a representative year from each decade, 1959 provides an index of films dealing with crises of faith relating to sexual, mythological, and political identity, and how these faiths are expressed on the screen.

In this installment of the Guilty Treasure Trove, I’ll discuss three movies that couldn’t appear to be more different. One is a genuine, but forgotten classic, one an underappreciated little horror movie, and one could prove potentially embarrassing. At first glance, these three titles have little in common, but there are certain parallels to be found here, from the similarity between Three’s High School corridors and rising paranoia, and Below’s haunted sub to Below’s and Sydney White’s very different, but equally feisty female protagonists.  On top of that, all three …

When people think of the great romances of the screen, they are inevitably drawn to the classics of Old Hollywood, or else the stale and uninspired romantic blockbuster comedies of recent years. The recent cash cows seem to be trying to leach on the successes of the seemingly unaffected and painless comedies of Leo McCarey and to a lesser degree, Howard Hawks. McCarey’s films bringing a unique and unparallelled humanism, while Hawks offers a complex and thorough exploration of gender roles within relationships and society. It’s hidden under the guise …

Most fashionable Romanian women try to dress like their beverage bottles.
As of January 2009, I still have not seen all the movies from 2007 that I wanted to see.  This is the blessing and the curse of being a cinephile in an age when technology has allowed my favorite medium to proliferate:  I will never want for new, intriguing cinema; I will also never be able to catch up.  The best I can do is slog ahead, basing the priority ranking of my Netflix queue on the recommendations of friends …

As  expected, Pixar’s Wall-E is topping many people’s and critics’ end–of–year lists. It’s not a big surprise to me; I tend to nod my head in agreement when I finish yet another Best of 2008 list and find Wall-E in the top spot. Of the few 2008 releases I’ve seen, I have the fuzziest feelings when thinking of that cute little robot. Yet these warm feelings aren’t entirely universal. There was some controversy about Wall-E’s message of anti-complacency and its depiction of humans in the future—bloated, lazy, atrophied slugs. People …

Standing atop a railway trestle somewhere between Missouri and South Dakota is a ghost, checking his fob watch and resting one hand on the butt of a Colt .45. He observes the passing of time with the soulful glare of a mad firebrand, or perhaps a whispering pine. His name is Jesse James, and he does not die alone. He traverses the landscape of what was once the American frontier, what was once a geography of still-open wounds– if only figuratively, in legacy – from the ravages of the Civil War. Jesse’s dead, and his victims ride with him.

Howard is smart to not get in the way of his actors. But as strong as his ensemble is, his aesthetic style is entirely unsuited to the material. His production crew faithfully evokes the atmosphere and bric-a-brac of an era three decades in the past, but his gaze is not detail-oriented, and even his powerhouse actors exist in an actorly plane different from the period sets. Ingredients like these can be dumped in a blender alongside several million dollars, pureed, and served in a milkshake glass, replete with a candy-striped bendy straw.

For those who were behaving too sensibly in the mid-1990s to know, Primal Rage (as opposed, we must guess, to Urbane Rage) was a video game by the makers of the wildly popular Mortal Kombat franchise. It worked on the same basic setup: You picked a character, and then you had that character engage in hand-to-hand combat with other characters, which were controlled by the computer or another player. You would do this over and over again, until your character was defeated, or you lost consciousness. Or interest. Primal Rage’s …

Transylvania Towers is an in-progress novella. Inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the story follows the journal entries of a narrator who, after being invited to stay at Transylvania Towers with his wife, has witnessed too much and now fears he is losing his mind. This is the second of six planned parts, the following of which will be published monthly. If you’re new to the series, you can read the first part here.
November 17, fragment
The door seems to be jammed. Or locked. I have tried the handle several times …

In Cinema Paradiso, Guiseppe Tornatore makes two astounding achievements: he reminds us all why we truly love film and why film is crucially important as an art form.