Best of Culture Snob Archive
- Jul 17 2010Acts of Hashem — Serious Man, A (2009)0
- Jul 18 2009A Static Film About Transience (and Self-Involvement, and Blowjobs)3
- Jul 10 2009The Slow Dawn of Surprise — Lovely by Surprise (2007)0
- Apr 15 2009The Form Is the Function — Memento1
- May 12 2008Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things — Orphanage, The (El Orfanato, 2007)0
- Apr 18 2008Burnt Toast — Shining, The (1980)4
- Dec 6 2007Short-Film Week: A Sweet, Whimsical, Dirty Movie About Rape or Regression — Talk to Her (2002, on the internal [tee hee] short film Shrinking Lover)3
- Nov 8 2007The Blossom: Jim Kurring2
- Jul 18 2007Snuffing Out and Getting Off3
- Nov 5 2006Abracadabra — Prestige, The (2006, essay)0
- Sep 20 2006Cock Tale — Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2006)0
- Aug 25 2006This Could Be It — Game 6 (2006)0
- Aug 7 2006The Tell-Tale Tapes? The Trouble with Caché — Caché (Hidden, 2005)4
- Aug 2 2006My Wife Is No Miss January — Calendar (1993, Opening Shot)3
- Nov 21 2005The Evil That Men Do — Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (2005) and Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)0
- Nov 8 2005Let's Do the Time Warp Again — Primer (2004)0
- Oct 27 2005A Circle of Loss — Spider Forest (Geomi sup, 2004)0
- Oct 12 2005Songs of Innocence and of Experience — History of Violence, A (2005)2
- Aug 15 2005(What's So Funny ’Bout) Grief, Strife, and Vigilantism? — Batman Begins (2005)0
- Jun 29 2005The Phantom Nuance — Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (2005)0
- Jun 8 2005Temptation's Taunt — Woodsman, The (2004)0
- Nov 4 2004The Luckiest Person in the World — Intacto (2001)0
- Oct 26 2004Portrait of the Artist from a Curious Distance — Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)0
- Jun 10 2004Blaming for Columbine — Elephant (2003)2
- Mar 11 2004Artifice as Honesty — American Splendor (2003)0
- Mar 5 2004The Power of Angels — Angels in America (2003)1
- Feb 19 2004Ordinary People — Lost in Translation (2003)0
- Feb 13 2004The Uncertainty of the Everyday — Plumber, The (1979)0
- Feb 4 2004Terrorism and Its Aftermath: Two Essays1
- Oct 23 2003I'm Going to Kill Myself Tomorrow7
- Oct 2 2003Christmas Is Coming! — Monster in a Box (1992)0
- Sep 24 2003Paul Auster's Locked Room2
- Sep 10 2003Tim and Jeff: A Love Story0
- Sep 8 2003Magnolia and Meaning — Magnolia (1999), Boogie Nights (1997), and Hard Eight (1996)4
- Aug 13 2003Spike Lee's Messy Beauty — 25th Hour (2002)1
- Aug 1 2003The Construction of Memory — Spider (2002)0
- Jul 26 2003Truth and Consequences — Ararat (2002)0
Recent Entries
Attaboy, Jim
In my hastily keyboarded notes after seeing Inception last weekend, I spent much time faulting Jim Emerson for his dismissal of Christopher Nolan and of the movie. Emerson made sweeping, unsupported generalizations in the service of his obvious dislike of...
Christopher Nolan’s Dead Women
In at least four of Christopher Nolan’s seven feature films, the plots and/or fixations are initiated or propelled by the death of a man’s spouse or girlfriend. Considering that Nolan’s primary thematic interest is obsession, isn’t this a little strange?...
Incepted
In taking down Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Jim Emerson writes: “[W]hat this movie’s facilely conceived CGI environments have to do with dreaming, as human beings experience dreams, I don’t know. ... [T]he movie’s concept of dreams as architectural labyrinths — stable...
Acts of Hashem
I was surprised after watching (and then reading reviews of) the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man that there was such a fervent (if small) backlash against it. The movie — about a Job-like Jewish professor in a Minnesota suburb in...
On Re-Creations
When I say that the filmed version of Watchmen and the horror remake Quarantine are faithful to the point of tedium, I intend that largely as a compliment. Great talent, care, time, and money have been spent not fixing what...
Incepted