Fear and Listlessness in the Suburbs

August 12, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

May December (2023) is, like all movies starring Julianne Moore, good. And, as might be expected, her talent anchors it. Moore’s willingness to play a monster so flatly and straightforwardly demonstrates her courage. Not that it really needs demonstrating. May December concerns an actress (Natalie Portman) sent to Savannah, Georgia to live with and study a woman (Moore) who began a sexual relationship and then married a middle schooler (played as an adult by Charles Melton). She gave birth to... Read more

Nothing is Written

August 12, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

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It’s a common movie-lover’s mistake, or I hope it is, to put off seeing certain great films. They’re simply too grand, too loaded down with Significance and History. The corollary to that fear is that we’re always wrong. As best I can tell, that drowsy anxiety is a surefire indicator that the movie, once watched, will blow you away. I have just had this experience with David Lean’s masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia (1962). There’s no point in reviewing it. Lean... Read more

The Point of Return

August 4, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

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Technically speaking, “melodrama” has little to do with the Greek word for “honey” (meli). But what’s the fun in what’s technical? Melodrama teaches us to be suspicious of the technically correct and attentive, rather, to the emotionally astute. Melodrama touches the spirit of the law and not the letter. It oozes, too sweet and rich—mere soap opera—for some. However, for those of us believers with a sweet tooth, it offers pleasure and insight in a way simultaneously filling and sickening.... Read more

Ridley Scott’s First Napoleon

July 29, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

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There is a species of genius in casting Harvey Keitel as a Frenchman. Doubly so as cavalryman in Napoleon’s Grande Armée, framed by tussles of brown hair, mustachioed lips barking “this is about ahnah! Duels a’ about ahnah!” There is also a species of genius in casting Keith Carradine, that gaunt Californian, as Keitel’s lifelong rival. Carradine responds in unaccented, standard, white-bread American news-speak. A distant relative of Carradine’s prepared editions of Archimedes and Euclid. His parents were actors. Keitel’s... Read more

Bewitching Individualism

July 23, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

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Sometimes you walk through a door and realize you don’t belong. Maybe it’s a bar, and everyone stops talking and stares at you. The place hasn’t seen anything but a regular in 15 years. Maybe it’s a retirement party where you’re 35 years younger than the nearest dowager. Or maybe you just tried to join your local Elks only to find a room full of graybeards and wood paneling. The same logic applies to art. The moon rises just so... Read more

Longlegs’ Short Game

July 16, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

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The Everlasting Gobstopper haunts me. Not because It fills children with blueberry juice, not because it has killed and may kill again. Rather, I wonder what happens if you don’t like one of the flavors. Presumably, if it covers everything from grape to pineapple and orange to strawberry, the treat will become a trick. I, for instance, hate artificial banana flavor. The thought of it washing away a nice cherry or lemon taste plagues me. Imagine the anticipation: every flavor... Read more

Rockin’ with Rod

July 9, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

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I saw another list. The internet is a tyranny of lists. At first, I enjoyed participating, ranking my own taste against that of, well, everybody else. But now, now I’ve seen too many lists, had my heart broken one too many times. This list was about TV shows. Nearly every winner premiered in the last 25 years, with a hefty weighting toward the more contemporary. Where’s the fun in that? Has nobody ever heard of Ernie Kovacs? I’m only 30,... Read more

Disappearing Accidents

July 1, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

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For the last couple months, I have been reading Peter Weiss’ Aesthetics of Resistance (1971-1981) alongside others with a penchant for self-flagellation. It’s a mammoth, paragraph-less, three-volume novel set in late 30s Germany, populated with long-forgotten Communist intellectuals, featuring excurses on, inter alia, the history of class as expressed through the Pergamon Altar, Stalinist show trials, the realism of Brueghel’s The Fight between Carnival and Lent (1559), and the ever-defeated attempts by the SPD and KPD to form a popular... Read more

The Movie You Can’t Make Today

June 24, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

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Five seconds on the internet—heck, maybe in person too—and you’ll hear the magic words: you couldn’t make that today. Mores shift. Tastes change. TV in the Eisenhower years seems unlikely to have broadcasted a teleplay of 120 Days of Sodom (1785, 1899). Gen Z wants fewer sex scenes in movies. Brian De Palma balks. This particular lament, however, has a particular meaning: we’ve become a bunch of over-sensitive dimwits who can’t handle boys palling around. I’ll leave the truth content... Read more

Saigon, New York

June 17, 2024 By Chase Padusniak

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I found Jacob’s Ladder (1990) when I was too young. I only knew that it was scary. To me, it had no plot. Some war of which I was dimly aware. A scene reminiscent of that cancelled episode of Pokémon (1997-Present), the one that induced seizures. Jake (Tim Robbins) was unhappy. He was scared. Now, I know he is a PhD working at the Post Office. He discusses Meister Eckhart with his cherubic chiropractor. The job market has been so... Read more