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  Not since Brad Pitt 's performance as Billy Beane in Moneyball have I been this emotionally invested in what a character was always eating or drinking onscreen.  In HBO's Mare of Easttown , Kate Winslet plays Pennsylvania detective Mare Sheehan. (Winslet is brilliant in the role.) Like Billy Beane, Mare's approach and understanding of her immediate environment or dilemma is translated through what she's consuming; it's as if the food or drinks become company players in her stage drama. And it's not just food either; Mare vapes and smokes too. Anything she consumes becomes important in the moment. My ears are listening to the dialogue and my brain is processing the plot, but my eyes and salivary glands are licking up the drops of condensate beading down her bottles of Rolling Rock.  The foods become so integral to the Mare experience, to the unfurling of her character, that at one point she's even attacked by a full gallon of milk (it's thrown through...

Martin Scorsese 's new film The Irishman , which makes its streaming debut today on Netflix , is another landmark achievement from one of the world's greatest filmmakers. The film is also a reckoning for Mr. Scorsese. The fact that The Irishman opens up with a long tracking shot (photographed by Rodrigo Prieto ) is a deliberate nod to Scorsese's -- arguably -- most famous sequence: the long tracking shot into the Copacabana from Goodfellas (photographed by the late Michael Ballhaus ). Nearly 30 years after that shot first dazzled audiences, Scorsese looks to be making an amendment to his visual thesis. Gone is the glory and glamour from the Goodfellas days. In The Irishman , melancholy oozes from the edges of the frame. Right out of the gate, we're introduced to the end of the road: a senior home where mob hitman Frank Sheeran ( Robert De Niro ) sits alone, awaiting his meaningless death. When this shot is juxtaposed against the Goodfellas shot showing Henry H...

Something I tend to do at some point in the evening, whether or not drinks are involved, is to make anyone who is visiting my apartment sit down and watch something I love or find compelling or just want to share because I think it's the most special thing. It could be a whole movie or a short film or a music video. Maybe it's an SNL digital short. Sometimes it could be a video essay I just cut and want some feedback on. The through line is always the same: it's the moving image that I always go back to, wanting to relish in experiencing it with other people. In the months since first watching Quentin Tarantino 's Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood , his slow-burning cinematic love letter to Tinseltown in 1968, it's become fact that this movie serves the same purpose for Mr. Tarantino. It's not just a glorious "hangout movie" -- it's a glorious "hangout movie about watching movies -- and TV and commercials and even just listening to the radio...

#InformedImages is a Free Cinema Now series that studies and brings to light influential films and other examples of moving images that informed and inspired specific visuals in later works. Paul Thomas Anderson shocked a lot of cinephiles last week when he dropped a new musical short film --  Anima  -- on Netflix . Anima is a creative collaboration with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke ; it immediately drew comparisons to Buster Keaton from several film writers. The Keaton comparison is fine and all but it is kind of a lazy summation in my opinion. To me, PTA's Punch-Drunk Love was more of a Buster Keaton homage if anything (just look at the sequence where Adam Sandler runs from the Four Blonde Brothers outside of a 99¢ Only Store). I feel that Anima comes from a perfect storm of pretty random inspirations. Among them, some Bergman ( Persona ) and McQueen ( Shame ). The centerpiece of Anima , I believe, is a direct offspring of the 1989 Oscar-winning animated sho...

#InformedImages is a Free Cinema Now series that studies and brings to light influential films and other examples of moving images that informed and inspired specific visuals in later works. I remember the exact the moment it clicked together for me. It was about half an hour into episode 2 (directed by  Josef Kubota Wladyka ) of Narcos: Mexico on Netflix . The camera crept across the dry, desert landscape toward a hole in the ground, where Rafael Caro Quintero (a.k.a. Rafa, played by Tenoch Huerta Mejía ) was digging furiously, in an attempt create a makeshift aqueduct to help grow his field of marijuana. It recalled images from the earlier sections of Paul Thomas Anderson 's masterpiece T here Will Be Blood, when Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis ) was digging for oil underneath the rocky ground. Then, as I continued to watch Narcos: Mexico , a more striking visual parallel to There Will Be Blood began to emerge. For example, as Rafa and his boss...

#InformedImages is a Free Cinema Now series that studies and brings to light influential films and other examples of moving images that informed and inspired specific visuals in later works. Christopher McQuarrie 's Mission: Impossible - Fallout is a triumph for the M:I franchise. Not only is it a superior sequel in the series, it's the best of the films since the original M:I entry (directed by  Brian De Palma ). Watching Fallout in theatres this past summer was one of the most exciting screening experiences I've had in a very long time. Each action sequence delivers the thrills and each is exceptional in their own right (from an electric HALO jump sequence to a bloody bathroom brawl in a nightclub). Since  Fallout is an important achievement in the action film canon, it is just as important to understand why this film rises above most other action films. A big part of that achievement, of course, comes from the writing, directing, editing, music and the amazing...

One of the enduring traits of the video essay genre is its invitation to revisit films that -- in all other instances -- have been exhaustively talked about, studied or celebrated and still be able to find new enlightenment in them. Caleb Hutchinson 's video essay  Surveillance & Police States in Night of the Living Dead covers some big ideas (political upheaval, societal unrest and ecosystems, etc.) within its modest three-minute running time. Hutchinson is working on a parallel of plane of thought to George Romero 's iconic Night of the Living Dead and it's fitting that both Romero and Hutchinson subtly instigate so much (inside the viewer) with so little (as far as production resources go). Enough from me. Go ahead and watch for yourself.

Luke Skywalker needs his alien milk just like Joe Gideon needs his Dexedrine. At least that's how I like to imagine things in the movie universe playing out in my head. It's no secret that I thought Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi  had a lot of problems , and in the months since first watching it my disappointment in writer/director Rian Johnson 's film has only grown. As a result, I began creating a mashup in my head, inspired by some of the ludicrous imagery in The Last Jedi (e.g. Rey snapping her fingers to some interpretative dance choreography in front of a mirror...in a cave) to think of how this latest installment would play out in the late Bob Fosse 's universe of divine decadence. Fosse, the celebrated theatre director and Oscar-winning filmmaker, was a consummate creator, always searching for the internal intersection of passion and pain. The (anti)hero of his best film  All That Jazz  is Joe Gideon, the drug-addled, sleepless and charisma...

#InformedImages is a Free Cinema Now series that studies and brings to light influential films and other examples of moving images that informed and inspired specific visuals in later works. Roger Deakins may very well win his first Oscar this Sunday March 4th at the 90th Academy Awards ceremony for Best Cinematography for his work in Blade Runner 2049 . Deakins has never won an Academy Award before -- even though he's been nominated fourteen times -- and industry insiders are predicting that he'll finally get his due this year. (Not that he needs a statuette anyways, since his body of work is staggering and exceptional.) So, for this installment of #InformedImages , I took Deakins' photographic work in Blade Runner 2049 and studied its images closely, to see where its DNA came from. The early scenes definitely evoke Tarkovsky and in specific, his final film The Sacrifice  -- which is interesting when you consider how much that film's protagonist Alexander ( Erl...

Alfred Hitchcock s' 1954 classic Rear Window has been dissected and rigorously studied in just about every way. There was even a video essay on how Hitchcock employed symmetry in select instances. While certain video essays spell their ideas out, not to mention written essays that like to argue through primary sources (a la footnotes), sometimes the best way to have a fresh approach to the material, is to literally cut it up and see its fragmentation coalesce into something enlightening. That's precisely the approach Sarah Etkin went with in her video essay on Rear Window . As you watch it, you'll see how its effective clashing of intercuts versus repetition begins to form a new narrative language. It's like an anvil fell on the film's reel and condensed it to fragmentary clues that only add to its aura of mystery and trancelike obsession.

Some of the more striking works in the (what I like to call) "new cinema" -- moving image art pieces that radically challenge traditional narrative structures -- have emerged from the cinematic movement focusing on the African diaspora . Filmmakers like Amir George ( Shades of Shadows ) and  Terence Nance ( Swimming in Your Skin Again ) have been prolific with moving image works expounding on the idea of Afrofuturism , and thus heightening the arts dialogue on what it means to be an African American today. Which brings me to  Ephraim Asili , a filmmaker whose impressive body of work over the years not only focuses on the African diaspora, but also carries on the renegade visual language of pioneering avant-garde titans like Jonas Mekas . Asili's work ranges from documentary to montage to appropriation art, but the vision is always consistent; a vision that aims to make a clearer sense of the ubiquitous images we take for granted (e.g. the quilted images of Obama in ...

At the close of every year, film critics and cinephiles tend to label it as a "good" or "bad" year for movies. Personally, I'm at the point in my life where I think every year is a good year for film. Some years might have more masterpieces in them, sure, but aren't we always discovering new ideas, images and icons when all is said and done? To help make this point, I expanded my best of the year video to include 50 films (in the past, I've done as many as 30 films). You'll notice that certain awards-darlings like Dunkirk and Darkest Hour -- among others -- aren't on my list. They just didn't do it for me, plain and simple. And as opposed to including a shortlist of the year's worst films, like Tulip Fever and Transformers: The Last Knight , I'd rather put a spotlight on the year's most disappointing film: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri . I think a film like Three Billboards can do more harm than a forgetful Mic...

In regards to the moving image essay, Stanley Kubrick 's final masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut has been studied, broken down, built back up and labored over in almost every way. I myself have even tied images of the film to Kanye West in the past. But in addition to Eyes Wide Shut 's haunting portraits of sex and its embedded labyrinth of Kubrick's own personal secrets, I don't believe there's been a video essay on how important the act of "walking" is in the film. Until now. Fabian Broeker 's "Dream Walking: Eyes Wide Shut" makes a good case for paying closer attention to the film's pedometer. It's also nicely edited to symphony music, alternating back and forth from full frames to split screens, giving the whole thing an easy-viewing experience too. Broeker: "Characters retrace their steps, mirror each other and wander aimlessly through imposing, hollow interiors, decorated with bright pinpricks of light. This is Kubrick’s...

Carlos Reygadas won the Best Director prize for his visually striking Post Tenebras Lux at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival . The images in Reygarads' film looked like they emerged from a dream; there was a soft focus around the edges of the frame, giving its characters the cinematic equivalent of a screen halo. Now those indelible visuals from Post Tenebras Lux are challenged and intensified in a captivating video art piece by Kevin L. Ferguson . Using progressive summed frames, Ferguson creates a unique side-by-side cine-essay ruminating on two ideas: what we see and how much of it we see in total. On the left side of the screen, Ferguson presents a still from every ten seconds of the first five minutes of  Post Tenebras Lux and on the right side of the screen he sums those progressive frames into ten-second intervals. The result is an arresting piece of moving image impressionism. See for yourself.

“Making videos becomes a way for someone to make sense of what they experience.” That line, as said by Kevin B. Lee  in his new collaborative video essay with  Chloé Galibert-Laîné , pretty much sums up the motivation behind every Video Essayist. It's the spur behind every idea for a montage, mashup or academic act of image prodding that results in a video essay. In Lee and Galibert-Laîné's new video essay "Reading // Binging // Benning" (commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam ), the pair employ the desktop documentary genre that Lee made popular with his sensational Transformers: The Premake to make a case on how to present a film neither of them have seen -- Readers by James Benning -- to a crowd of people (i.e. an audience at IFFR). Watch their illuminating and perfectly paced video essay below. a

Food was used in pretty startling ways on the big screen in 2017. Tea was in those hypnotic cups that sent black people to the Sunken Place in Get Out . Poisonous mushrooms plagued the characters of Phantom Thread and The Beguiled . Not to mention,  A Ghost Story  made us watch Rooney Mara eat half a pie in a single take that lasted almost five minutes. Yet, the most memorable -- and outrageous -- use of food in the cinema of 2017 was...sexual. Yes, sexual. And not just in one movie, but two movies! Tiffany Haddish demonstrated oral sex on a banana (that was being gripped by a cut open grapefruit) in Girls Trip , while  Timothée Chalamet climaxed into a peach in Call Me By Your Name . If only Jason Biggs knew he would be a trailblazer for fucking an apple pie back in 1999's American Pie . Enjoy the NSFW (or not safe for lunch?) video below. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "food porn."

The  International Film Festival Rotterdam 2018 is in full swing and one of the films that's getting the most amount of buzz and academic analyzing is  Metahaven and Rob Schröder 's Possessed ( watch the trailer ), an essay film that explores the idea of "self" in the age of social media. Screen Daily did a really insightful interview with the filmmaking team behind Possessed but something really interesting just happened with a group of video essayists, in regards to the film, that can articulate what the film means in a way that's more powerful than a standard question and answer format. The programme Critics' Choice commissioned a group of essayists (including Catherine Grant , Scout Tafoya and Irina Trocan , among others, all going by the name of  Team Metaprocessed )   to dive into Possessed and assess what their impressions were, figure out what Possessed aimed to achieve and then render that into their own responsive essay film. T...

Rowena Santos Aquino 's video essay "Antonioni's Walkabout" looks at how the formal act of walking emotes both practical and big postwar experiences in three of Michaelango Antonioni 's films:  L'Avventura (1960),  La Notte (1961) and  L'Eclisse (1962). Abandoning the traditional academic technique of using voiceover narration to make its points clear, Aquino subtly fades into sentence fragments at the bottom of the screen, giving the viewer enough time to process the moving image as well as understand the given footnote. It's an appropriate strategy and one that lingers in the mind, much like Antonioni's films do. In short, there's a staying power to simply suggesting an idea. Watch the video via Aquino's FilmStillLives Vimeo page:

#InformedImages is a Free Cinema Now series that studies and brings to light influential films and other examples of moving images that informed and inspired specific visuals in later works. By the time Terrence Malick 's first feature film Badlands debuted in 1973, Andrei Tarkovsky had already made Ivan's Childhood (1962),  Andrei Rublev (1966) and Solaris (1972). It's obvious that Malick was one of several 1970s filmmakers who came up on Tarkovsky's work, no doubt influenced and moved by the Russian auteur's moving images. Badlands  (and Malick's follow-up film Days of Heaven ) had a meditative and introspective quality that was elevated by stirring images of the natural world -- a Tarkovsky concoction if there ever was one. Tarkovsky's 1975 film The Mirror was a turning point for both the filmmaker and the films it would influence going forward, since The Mirror broke the rules of what a traditional narrative should look like and how a story could ...

Assistant Camera and Video Essayist  Zackery Ramos-Taylor 's latest video takes the side-by-side visual essay form to exciting frontiers with his fully comprehensive "Based on a True Story." Those who follow my own video essay work on this site will know that I'm an enthusiastic supporter of this kind of visual style (e.g. my #InformedImages video series). Ramos-Taylor describes his inspiration for "Based on a True Story" (via  Vimeo) : "How does Hollywood interpret History? This video compares historical/found footage of moments in history with Hollywood’s attempt to reenact these moments. Oftentimes Hollywood categorize’s these films with the overused tagline “Based on a True Story” in order to show a dramatized retelling of these historical moments. Production design, costumes, props, blocking, and body language are several factors that determines the authenticity of these moments as true or far from it. Ranging from interviews to sports highl...