Scars of War: Watching Battle of the Sexes
Until recently, coming out was almost always dangerous—not only to our careers and our relationships but also to our bodies. And so hiding was (and sometimes still is) a necessity.
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Film
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #101: The Dardenne Brothers
Aware of The Bechdel Test or not, the Belgian brothers keep churning out movies that pass with flying colors.
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Spaces of Exception vs. Spaces of Redemption: The Films of Ana Lily Amirpour
Diasporic communities live inside a host nation, but they also live with difference.
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Erasing the Girl: Why Don’t We Trust Women to Tell Their Stories of Disordered Eating?
I didn’t want to criticize her, or demand explanations from her. I just wanted to hear her speak.
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Empathy Is Cheap: A Conversation with Brandon Harris
Brandon Harris discusses his memoir Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, gentrification in New York City and Brooklyn, the homogenization of American cities by corporate America, and whiteness of film culture.
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There Is Simply No Time for This: Whose Streets? and Civil Rights Cinema
It is unlikely I will see the US justice system evolve toward an egalitarian ideal in my lifetime. But Whose Streets? does offer a clearly visible North Star.
...moreFetishizing Distress: The Wrong Light and Sex Trafficking
Josie Swantek Heitz’s and Dave Adams’s The Wrong Light, theatrically released in NYC through Cinema Guild on July 14, is disturbing on several levels. First, there’s the story itself. The filmmakers set out to create a portrait of the Children’s Organization of Southeast Asia (COSA), a nonprofit boarding school of sorts founded in 2005 by […]
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The Rumpus Review of It Comes at Night
“It” does not even “come” in the traditional sense. These primal, atavistic qualities are with us all the time, lying dormant until the right situation coaxes them forth.
...moreWatch After Adderall Free Tonight!
After Adderall is a feature film by Rumpus founder Stephen Elliott reimagining the absurd experience of having one’s book translated into a film. The movie stars Mickaela Tombrock and Bill Heck and features Lili Taylor, James Urbaniak, Ned Van Zandt, and Michael C. Hall. There are cameos from authors including Susan Orlean, Nick Flynn, Evan […]
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How The Keepers Reframes Confession as a Feminist Act
Critics have noted how The Keepers is similar to other prestige documentaries but with a significant difference—its focus on the victims and their stories.
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Out of the Trenches: The Rumpus Review of Wonder Woman
If there was ever a case for women avoiding Botox, Diana’s signature skepticism for the patriarchy is it. She has never encountered womanhood as subordinate, and she’s not about to start.
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Lone Star Cinema
In clinging to a set of memories that fade more every day, maybe I’m also clinging to an idyllic version of my own past.
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Susan Sarandon, “Bernie Bro” Politics, and White Privilege
As a longtime fan, it pains me to say it, but Sarandon is everything that’s wrong with mainstream, non-intersectional white feminism.
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Casting JonBenét and the Pageantry of Brokenness
It is an uncomfortable admission, but we hunger for stories that sensationalize the extremes of human behavior. We want to crawl under the police tape and see the outlines of bodies.
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Don’t Think Twice and the Power of Improvising through the Unknown
It’s a little extraordinary when you realize that you’re the one getting in your own way.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #77: Hauschka
Lion could be a simple homecoming story, the prodigal son returning to the place he was born. Except, the son in question was six when he left. Now, he’s twenty-six and his story is far from simple. Garth Davis’s film, like his TV offering Top of the Lake, is a beautiful, emotional rollercoaster. Lion takes us […]
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #75: Deborah Kampmeier
I met Deborah Kampmeier at a workshop in November. We were two weeks post-election; the room was raw with emotion, and electric with conversations about resistance. This tall, badass woman dressed in all black sauntered into the room, and chose a seat at the table. When she read, my solar plexus exploded, and I couldn’t stop […]
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Oscars Flub as Grand Finale for Camp
On the Hollywood stage—amidst gasps, jaw drops, and pearl clutches—we witnessed one final, beautifully coded failure and an over-the-top dethroning of the serious.
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Safety Nets: On Seeing Movies with My Children
There’s no blueprint for any of this. If there were, I would have read it by now.
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SquareRoot of Love: Valentine’s Day in Paris – A WinePoetryFilm Project
Love. Because our collective survival depends on it.
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The Girl on the Bike
First, we must recognize our removal from the machinations of the shadows. The screen stands between us and the internal world depicted on it. There is no communion.
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Echoes of Winter: Revisiting Inside Llewyn Davis
The tale of the self-made man is as much a myth as that of a cat having nine lives.
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The Future of Body Horror: Can Our Art Keep up with Our Suffering?
The individuality of body horror is its signature attribute. Nothing is more intimate than one’s own body, and by extension, one’s own physical suffering.
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The Rumpus Review of Rogue One
So, what would populist ideology even look like in Star Wars?
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The Rumpus Review of La La Land
Fantasy needs reality “because it’s only with the real backdrop that it works at all,” and reality needs fantasy to challenge its façade
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Arrival: A Metaphor for Polemic Times
We are disconnected. Connection fails when we fail to take the time to literally, and therefore metaphorically, see each other.
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Macho Prey: Homophobia and Unlikely Victims in Tickled
The film only grazes the issue, but homophobia is the fuel of the harassment that the targets face.
...moreThe Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #58: James Steven Sadwith
A self-described “actor’s director,” James Steven Sadwith has been writing, directing, and producing television movies, miniseries, and dramas for nearly three decades—and is perhaps best known for his work on the lives of Frank Sinatra and Elvis. But for Coming through the Rye, his first feature film for the big screen, Sadwith comes closer to […]
...moreSong of the Day: “Hurt”
“I hurt myself today,” Johnny Cash sings in one of the last recordings he made, his poignant cover of the Nine Inch Nails song, “Hurt.” The song couldn’t be more appropriate now, during this week of confusion and heartache and regret. Cash chose to release it towards the end of his life, perhaps as a kind […]
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The Rumpus Review of Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation
Parker set out to bring a different kind of “slavery movie” to audiences. And it is different.
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