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Video Essayist Philip Brubaker has released his latest moving image work It's A Wonderful Hitchcock , a tantalizing reimagining of Frank Capra 's It's a Wonderful Life . Brubaker expounds on his piece at Vimeo : " Alfred Hitchcock 's unmistakable cinematic stamp is the inspiration for this re-imagining of It's A Wonderful Life . Bernard Hermann 's score for Vertigo serves as the key ingredient to bring out the tension, anxiety and anguish of Frank Capra's film. Allusions to other Hitchcock films arise when this Christmas classic starring Jimmy Stewart is recut to feel like an offering from the Master of Suspense." The result is a fascinating rendering that challenges our predetermined image association with Capra's film. The key crossover element here is Stewart, who stars in both Vertigo and It's A Wonderful Life . Brubaker here speaks to the larger dialogue of Video Essayists challenging the vault of moving images, meaning tha...

When Sony Pictures  decided to abruptly pull their latest film All the Money in the World from AFI Fest in November, people were surprised. Then when director Ridley Scott announced he planned to  replace the film's star Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer a mere month before its scheduled Christmas release date, people were downright shocked. And now, in the most impressive of ways, Scott actually pulled this last minute reshoot off in only nine days! But what about the film itself? Outside of all this behind the scenes drama, is it any good? I’ll give you the short answer: Yes. All the Money in the World is based on the later years of real life American industrialist J. Paul Getty  (Plummer), who went a long way from his Minnesota roots to become—at the time—the richest private citizen who had ever lived (which with inflation today would be close $9 billion). The central plot focuses on an infamous and publicly-followed incident where one of Getty...

For cinephiles, December is filled with year-end best lists of films and more specifically, overlooked moving image content. As the video essay form continues to grow in popularity, more and more online media outlets continue to highlight and engage with the high volume of video works churned out by cine-essayists. Over the last couple of weeks both Film School Rejects and the British Film Institute 's Sight & Sound International Film Magazine revealed their picks for the best video essays of 2017. In regards to Sight & Sound , I was honored to be included among the video essay practitioners and scholars who submitted their favorite video essays from this last year; I was even more honored to learn that my fellow peers in that same poll picked some of my own video works on their personal lists. In addition, two other video works of mine were included in the Film School Rejects list as well. With the enthusiasm behind video essays today, I can't help but acknowl...

On one level, Craig Gillespie has grown into a director with an agreeable work ethic. Specifically, I mean that in how he adapts his sensibilities into whatever project he is working on, for better or worse. The first film I saw of his was Lars and the Real Girl during the 43rd Chicago International Film Festival . Gillespie was there for the post-screening Q&A where he mentioned his background in commercial work before transitioning to feature films. Lars was an assured piece of filmmaking; quiet, introspective and smartly laced with delicate humor. I looked forward to seeing how the Gillespie film canon would grow. Unexpectedly, the next film Gillespie made was the remake of the 1980s horror comedy  Fright Night , starring Colin Farrell . It in no way shared anything close to the special subtle drama of Lars (although I admit I enjoyed Fright Night on a superficial level, mainly because of my soft spot for vampire films). Since Fright Night , Gillespie switched gears ...

Earlier this week I was reading about how President Donald J. Trump shockingly removed climate change from the list of global threats in the latest rendering of his administration's national security strategy. "Fake News" has reached critical mass, it would seem. As 2017 comes to a close, and the axis of the Earth and human existence spins wildly closer to extinction, along comes this imperfect, well-meaning, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately touching motion picture from Oscar-winner Alexander Payne . The film is Downsizing and it stars the face of the American white male: Matt Damon . Whatever public relations shit storm  Damon may find himself in during the days leading up to the film's release shouldn't detract from what really is a golden and quietly surprising performance. This is good work by the former Will Hunting. Downsizing takes place in the near future where a group of Norwegian scientists have successfully created a procedure that shrinks ...

One of the leaders on the forefront of studying and articulating the moving image, Catherine Grant 's impressive and serious work both in the academic and the publishing realms has been invaluable to the greater visual essay canon for the last several years. Her site Film Studies For Free is an invaluable resource for video essay curation and education, while her online publication [in]Transition has been a successful Herculean feat of visual essay content aggregation, assignment and analysis. Earlier this year University of Reading professor John Gibbs sat down with Grant for the Videographic Film Studies Now workshop and filmed this nearly hour-long conversation that is a must-watch for video essay creators and enthusiasts. 

When Sicario came out in 2015, it ended up being my pick for the best film of that  year . It surprised me even. I walked in expecting a decent thriller about the war on the drug cartel but what I watched was something much more cerebral, carnal and contemporary in spirit. The screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (who directed this year's fantastic Wind River ) presented a story that was surprising and engrossing. It became a prestige action picture, if you will. Sicario was also that rare critical darling of being both an R-rated drama and a commercial success. So, now we have the sequel Sicario 2: Soldado . There are several key players not returning for this film: Director  Denis Villeneuve , Cinematographer Roger Deakins and co-stars Emily Blunt and  Daniel Kaluuya (who also starred in this year's hit Get Out ). Although the omission of such talent can be a red flag, the sequel does bring back an impressive core: actors Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin , plus S...