‘Mr. Turner’ Is a Film as a Canvas
Mr. Turner, the biopic of the famous painter J.M.W. Turner, speaks to the inherent difficulties of navigating the art world.
Chris Robé
Chris Robé is a professor of film and media studies. His articles on media activism have appeared within journals such as Jump Cut, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Framework and Film History. He has written two books: Left of Hollywood: Cinema, Modernism, and the Emergence of U.S. Left Film Culture (2010) and Breaking the Spell: A History of Anarchist Filmmakers, Videotape Guerrillas, and Digital Ninjas (2017). His forthcoming co-edited collection with Stephen Charbonneau, InsUrgent Media from the Front: A Media Activism Reader, will be published by University of Indiana Press in fall 2020. . He is currently completing a book on state repression, media activism, and grassroots organizing that addresses copwatching, Muslim American resistance, counter-summit protesting, and animal rights activism. He is also conducting archival work on Raymond Williams' work concerning grassroots and alternative media. In his spare time he agitates for his friendly faculty union and plays music. None of his views reflect that of his employer-- thank god.
Laughing Through the Great Depression With ‘Sullivan’s Travels’
The real charm of Sullivan’s Travels is the way it exposes Hollywood’s mediation of the Depression and the trauma it inflicted.
‘Dear White People’ Untangles Complicated Relations of Racism and Identity
This film's ability to balance character-driven stories with didactic critiques against the racist practices that haunt our daily lives speaks to a sophisticated outlook rare among first-time directors.
‘Boyhood’ and the Transcendence of the Everyday
Boyhood returns to the view that originated with Italian Neorealism: documenting everyday life is the biggest spectacle one could capture on film.
In ‘Magic in the Moonlight’, Ideas Trump Characters
The fundamentalist atheism and myopic intellectualism of Woody Allen's latest depiction of an older man/younger woman dynamic makes it a pale imitation of his best work.
The Caging of an American Revolutionary
American Revolutionary wants to offer the appearance of revolution while anesthetizing any deeper understanding of the forces involved.
“Capital’s” Critique of Global Capitalism Is Sage but Dispassionate
Capital offers a savage critique of capitalism and the banking industry, but it fails to imagine its ability to sustain its inhumane and self-destructive practices.
Transcendental Immanence in the Dardenne Brothers’ ‘The Kid with a Bike’
The Dardenne brothers’ intense concentration on objects and gestures reveals a desire to plunge so far into a reality that one can seize the ineffable, as experienced while watching The Kid with a Bike.