Bursts out into star-sprinkled space.
From Alien by Walter Hill, David Giler and Dan O’Bannon: Outside the windows, clouds, clouds, clouds. Another tremor runs through the ship. The crews eyes...
Category: movies & television
how much show, how much tell
an estimation of dialogue in a set of mostly thriller movies. dialogue taken from popular subtitle files.
language, screenwriting
We are advised to not include Spanish language dialogue in an English language script. Rather, every character should, at first, speak English and then their wo...
bathrooms, blades
the lobster (2015), se7en (1995)
epidemics, as seen in zombie movies
the victim becomes the victimizer. human contact – the very thing that makes us human – kills us. it’s a total and absolute threat to the human condition....
a monologue from 28 Days Later
A lyrical, precise monologue by Alex Garland, excerpted: It started as rioting, and right from the beginning you knew this was different. Because it was happeni...
movies are magic tricks
magic tricks work when the audience is not fully aware of what they are seeing. movies are the same. when it works, the audience says: “i didn’t see...
visionary leadership
when you see what’s coming before everyone else does: from the excellent Attack the Block
the science of bad movies
Nora Caplan-Bricker: The ideal bedtime story, according to Nitun Verma, a national spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, is one that “doesn’t...
A very popular movie on how the terrorists win
A group of terrorists attempts to steal a weapon of mass destruction by driving a truck through the gates of a government compound in the capital city of an Afr...
Ghost in the Shell
Emily Yoshida makes a subtle argument for the changing political context of art: Japanese audiences, unlike American audiences, don’t understand Motoko to...
the nadir in “midnight run”
In the first image, the protagonist is defeated. He faces away from us, towards the past. The road ahead of him is indirect and would take him away from us. He ...
Werk
A contrast in labor relations: Stud Terkel: Stills from Magic Mike.
Dry direction
Jason Guerrasio: “We’re all standing there and Malick hands out these pieces of paper to all of us,” Lennon said. “And the one he gave me said, ‘There’s no such...
Hollywood
From West of Eden: An American Place by Jean Stein, excerpted by Andrew O’Hagan: I was very young in 1955, when Warner Brothers did Rebel without a Cause ...
love on the line
Top: The Conversation, Bottom: Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios
A movie about the “war on drugs”
At the end of the excellent movie Sicario, Benicio del Toro puts a gun to Emily Blunt’s face and tells her that she should move to a small town where the ...
one hero’s journey
“Beyond the Lights“, the hair arc
The heroes we get (summer of 2014, continued)
Guardians of the Galaxy is full of clever jokes and features a disarmingly charming actor as its protagonist. It was made by extremely talented people but its g...