Eraserhead

My Superlative Year in Film: 2014 Edition

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forcemajeure03

This year was a little different from last year. It was the year I really started writing. I’ve had this blog for, like, eight or so years and maintained it. I’ve written intermittently for VeryAware.com for a while, as well as TheBlackMaria.org. But this is the year that I really pushed my writing, so that my audience grew and I made more friends and engaged with more people than ever. I was fortunate to have my work featured on Movie Mezzanine (of which I am now Assistant Editor), Under the Radar Magazine, Film School Rejects, IndieWire’s /Bent, Sound on Sight, and elsewhere (you can find all of my work here). I got to go to two film festivals for the first time ever, and attend as press for them, which was amazing. I actually got to meet the writers I so much admire in person, in the flesh, and pick the brains and hang out with them. And this time, I actually got to watch a bunch of movies from 2014, which almost never happens. At the time of this writing, on Christmas Eve, I’ve seen 96 new releases, and 423 new to me films in general (a step down from last year, but whatever). So, here was my superlative year in film, 2014 edition.   Read the rest of this entry »

Identity Thief: The Double

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Jesse Eisenberg walks down a sparsely lit corridor next to himself in an extended tracking shot. He walks next to himself. He peers over to check how alike the man next to him is. But he hates that man. And he hates himself. The irony. In Richard Ayoade’s adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novella The Double, Eisenberg shows how painful self-loathing can be and how it can drive someone insane. Labyrinthine and Freudian, it grabs you by the neck and doesn’t let go.

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