Writing on Film

This is a selection of essays and reviews I’ve written about movies (or a movie-like music video).

Billy Jack Between Two Worlds

Billy Jack is the type of cultural artifact that’s so strange, and so precisely of its time, you would be justified if you finished reading this and decided the movie simply didn’t exist.

Men at the edge of the envelope

The Right Stuff is about men—men whose lives revolve around “flying and drinking and drinking and driving and driving and balling,” not always in that order, but to a degree that’s beyond the ability of an ordinary man and just short of the point where pursuing one would destroy access to the others.

Darlin’ Don’t Refrain

“November Rain” is more than a music video. It’s every idea that existed in hard rock in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s compressed into nine minutes. It’s an opening shot of pills being popped, the sound of wind fading into strings, a drum fill, a tinkling piano, a church in the desert, Christ on the Cross crying tears of blood. And this is just the first minute and a half, before the vocals even start.