Film
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Narrowly Avoiding the Spotlight
It took me nearly twenty years and the power of a fine film to fully realize what happened to me in the confessional was an inappropriate act by an adult against a child.
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The Rumpus Review of 10 Cloverfield Lane
To hell with alien attacks; cinematically speaking, Hollywood’s destroying itself just fine.
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The Slow Fall of the Hot Heroine
If nothing else, it’s the opinion of other women that encroaches on mine. Resemblances spark my joy; differences become character flaws.
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The Rumpus Interview with William Cusick
Director William Cusick discusses his new film, Pop Meets the Void, its unconventional narrative structure, simultaneously acting and directing, and the universal urge to create.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Mark Leyner
Mark Leyner on his new book Gone with the Mind, pressuring the novel form, being a purist Dionysian, and artisanal pap smears.
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The Rumpus Review of The Witch
The most interesting part of The Witch is that the family is so convinced of humanity’s fallen, sinful nature that it never occurs to them to even look for an aggressor from without.
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The Double Agency of Will Smith in Sci-Fi
Smith’s characters act as witnesses for the rehabilitated offender, the white-supremacist nation-state.
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The Rumpus Review of The Big Short
My reading of the audience’s reaction to the bombast of The Big Short is not that people genuinely find the story amusing, but rather, that we are experiencing discomfort while simultaneously expecting to be entertained.
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The Rumpus Review of The Revenant
On its surface, The Revenant is a story about revenge and survival. On a deeper level, it’s about how those two motivations factor into a generational battle between the (God-like) forces of nature and industry—a sort of perverted Armageddon.
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A Place That She Herself Has Imagined
Brooklyn is a place of layers both personal and historical, one that, as Colm Tóibín puts it, is “full of ghosts.” Reflecting on the recent film adaptation of his novel, the Brooklyn author observes one of the borough’s more visible…
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#OscarsSoWhite: Calling Out Academy Bias
Instead of influencing our movie-going habits, The Academy can take its cues from us. We can continue to speak up through social media and—more importantly—our dollars.
