by Walter Chaw
With training in British Romanticism, I painted myself darkling into a corner. There are few options outside of starvation for such a background—fortunately, salvation came for me in the form of movies and their analysis. We like to talk about the “seven arts,” and I tend to think of cinema as the eighth–the one, like the fourth stop in the cycle of the feminine archetype, that encompasses all the others. Film at its best can be poetry and painting; stagecraft and prose; music, yes; dance, yes; sculpture? Frank Zappa famously said that talking about music was like dancing about architecture, which wags took one way (i.e., don’t even try), but I always took as meaning that it’s hard, but if you’re good at dancing, you definitely could. And you could do it eloquently.
Writing about film has the potential to be the key critical discourse of our time. I think, of any number of other things to recommend them, that movies replicate the essential way we pass down knowledge as a species: in a dark cave before a flickering light. They react quickly to changes in our social environment; they’re the tide warnings on the ocean of our zeitgeist. Ignore what movies have to say about us at our peril, especially during times of strife. It means something that you can trace what countries are in the most tension based on the quality and intensity of their horror films over any given period.
Anyway. I’ve been married now for 22 years to a beautiful, brilliant woman who has somehow found the capacity to tolerate me. We have two kids together, a girl, 16, and a boy, 13. The girl has accompanied me over the years as I’ve taught graduate and post-grad seminars across topics like auteurism, noir, Hitchcock (in each of his career phases), the Archers, Wilder (that asshole), Preminger, silent comedies and tragedies, and the melodramas of Douglas Sirk. By the time she was 12, she’d seen 40 Hitchcocks and was beginning to make connections in them that have informed my scholarship over the last four years. Steal from the best, as they say.
She’s always been a daredevil. Her independence is absolutely fierce and uncompromising. It’s been an incredible privilege for her mom and me to nurse that spark into a wildfire. My son is more cautious about what he watches. He doesn’t like to be appalled. When we went on vacation a couple of years ago to celebrate my leaving a job, we visited a little theatre on Cape Cod that still had a daily screening of Jaws (which shot in nearby Martha’s Vineyard). It was awesome. We watched John Carpenter’s The Thing a few months ago after years of anxiety, and he’s declared it his favourite movie of all time. So, he’s getting there.
Her favourite movie is either The Royal Tenenbaums or Donnie Darko (theatrical cut). His favourites are The Thing and The Good, The Bad, and the Weird. Now that we’re shut in together, my wife suggested we do a nightly movie as a family, with me in charge of curation and discussion, and so…that’s what we’re doing.
This blog isn’t meant as an avenue for reviews of these films, but as a way to share this journey with you guys and to give a short lead time for the next flick if you want to jump in with us. I’ll share some of the conversation we have after the films and the discussion topics I’ve prepped on my end that offer a rationale for why I’m picking what I’m picking.
Most of these films are available through streaming services. Kanopy is an incredible resource, and all you need is a library card.
We’re offering this as a special thank-you to our Patreon subscribers. It’s not much, and at the end of the day, nothing could express how deeply we appreciate all of you. You support what we do here; our reviews are never behind a paywall and never will be. With recent events, our belts are cinching tighter and tighter–as are all of yours. There are so many worthy places your money can and should go. That you include us in your gifts is…well, it gives us a reason and a meaning. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Okay: groundwork set? Let’s go.
