February 10, 2026 On Film At the Movies with John Ashbery By John Yau Eddie Valiant and Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). One of the things I learned from John Ashbery was to be myself, especially when it came to movies, the subject we talked about most, with poetry a distant second. He showed me that I could be a fanboy because I was one. He made it clear that I did not need to be embarrassed about my enthusiasms, which ran the gamut, from the campy science fiction and badly made horror films of Ed Wood to the low-angled, stationary camera of Yasujiro Ozu and Hong Kong noir films starring Chow Yun-fat. Though John was a shy man, and kept a lot to himself, he was not afraid to be silly, serious, and emotional about an artificial world that was to him more real than the world we lived in. John and I talked about movies, directors, actors and actresses, cameramen, everything having to do with film. He once sent me a VHS of Wood’s Orgy of the Dead (1965), starring strippers in a graveyard at night, and guaranteed it was in “pristine condition.” Another time, knowing I was interested in “yellowface” and all the non-Asian actors and actresses who played Asians in films, he gave me a book on the subject that had been sent to him by an academic press. When I was doing research on the silent film actress Anna May Wong, I met a man at a movie-memorabilia fair who published a monthly newsletter about minor Hollywood stars from the silent era. The inexpensively produced stapled publication consisted of short articles summarizing the subject’s career, where they were at the present moment (often in an assisted living facility), and their filmography. John was very happy that I got him a two-year subscription, which he later renewed, and quipped: “Do you think he will ever run out of material?” John couldn’t get too much of films. He was endlessly fascinated by those who lived in what his friend, Frank O’Hara, in his poem, “Ave Maria,” called “that glamorous country.” This essay is about the adventures that John and I had while watching and talking about movies and TV shows, and the different rabbit holes that I discovered and I scurried down. Read More
January 27, 2026 On Film The Answer Is Love: On Reds By Laurie Stone Still from the movie Reds. Screenshot from official trailer. What are we ever really fighting for? The answer is love. Love in the movies, and on the streets, and in our heads—instead of the dead people we are seeing right now. Existence is a contagion of love. That’s why you have to fast-forward through a bunch of scenes in Reds, where men are giving speeches to other men in English and Russian with those faces of certainty—not hope, but certainty—that they are right and have it all figured out. You know those men. You’ve been to those meetings with the guy in the front—it could be a faculty meeting—the guy jabbing his finger, not like Mick Jagger in a dance routine, more like Moses holding a tablet. Those guys who love the sound of their voice more than they love love. Everyone has been to one of those meetings, or hundreds of them, wondering how they were still breathing with all the air sucked out of the room. A fair number of these scenes interrupt Reds, which runs for more than three hours and has an intermission, like Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey, both excellent movies, as is Reds, if you gently fast-forward past the speeches and get back to John Reed and Louise Bryant, a love story. Read More
October 21, 2025 On Film Screenwriting 101: How to Reverse Engineer a Puzzle-Box Thriller By Liby Hays Illustration by the author. The first rule of screenwriting is that it’s always formatted in 12-point Courier font—as if ejected from the typewriter of a gumshoe detective. Beyond this, there are no rules. There are no necessary qualifications to screenwriting and no academically paywalled knowledge base. The requisite research is the substrate of our collective consciousness: movies. Have you seen a handful of these over the course of your life? Then you’ve probably internalized the basics and know in your gut how a story should unfold. Penning page after page of dialogue will feel effortless. Unlike other forms of writing, you needn’t worry about transitions or logical coherence. It’s, in essence, the same as playing with dolls. Read More
August 1, 2025 On Film The White Blouse of Sandra Mozarowsky By Clara Usón Mozarowsky in Beatriz (1976), directed by Gonzalo Suárez. For centuries, philosophers, theologians, and poets have pursued the meaning of life. Is there one, and, if so, what is it? Spirituality? Religion? Ask a man on the street the meaning of life and he might just say “Surviving.” But ask a teenager, and you’ll get your answer. She’ll tell you the meaning of life is Love, and her certainty should make you happy for her. By twelve, I’d fallen in love more than fifteen times. My romances were huge, earth-shattering, much more devastating and intense than any of the ones that came later. All the men were perfect, being imaginary, and since I saw no need for messy breakups, we always ended things on good terms. When I was six or seven, our babysitter entertained us with fairy tales. She always told the same story. Once upon a time, in a faraway land, Pablo (my brother) married a princess and became king. Blanca (my sister) wed the crown prince of the country next door, which meant she, too, was in line for a throne. I always got the prince’s younger brother, which meant contenting myself with being a princess—and I was not content. Who would be? In my imagination, I stole my sister’s boyfriend. Sandra Mozarowsky was never a queen. She was never a king’s girlfriend. She was the king’s lover, though, if you believe the rumors. Read More
July 10, 2023 On Film Something Good By Roger Reeves Still from Something Good, 1898. Courtesy of the Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. 1. It’s the silent abandon with which they kiss, as if they are aware of someone striding toward them, this someone’s finger wagging, telling them, “No, no, not here, stop that now, or I’ll be forced to separate you, you profligate negroes.” But before this imagined censor can reach them, they pull each other close and kiss again, their mouths disappearing into each other, their mouths taking the shape of their longing. They touch each other as if they have just been released from something, as if their license to touch is short, stolen, or forged. In Something Good, which features the first known on-screen kiss by a Black couple, filmed in 1898, it appears as if the two actors, a peach pit–toned Black man wearing a bow tie and jacket and a peach skin–toned Black woman wearing a ruffled collared dress belted at the waist, are touching each other after a long period of denial, as if they have forgotten what the other’s mouth and hands and neck feel like and are now voraciously reacquainting themselves with each other. The pit of the peach swaddled by its flesh, becoming whole there on the limb of the day. Voraciously seeking itself, making itself happen—be. No, not quite voraciously, but without caution or care for who’s watching, though they are both aware, and we, too, are aware that someone is watching their performance. Read More
April 6, 2023 On Film It’s Nineteen Seventy-Nine, Okay By J. D. Daniels Artistic rendering of a double black hole, 2015. ESA/Hubble. Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CCO 4.0. It has been more than ten years since I wrote these words for this magazine’s website: “At last I had begun writing my long-planned book about Captain Ahab’s doomed enterprise in Moby-Dick—about Robur’s doomed enterprise in Verne’s Maître du Monde—about the doomed enterprise of Doctor Hans Reinhardt from the 1979 science-fiction film The Black Hole.” And now maybe we can approach the same topic from a different angle, as the contortionist said on prom night. Refuse to accept that it is your fate to refuse to accept your fate. The only way not to be driven insane by it is to be insane from the outset. The Black Hole, 1979. It amazes me that a group of people could make a movie about being afraid of a hole, being attracted to a hole, feeling excited and curious about going into a hole, feeling concerned that, while on the one hand it might not be such a good idea to go into the hole, on the other hand maybe all the best things in life will become possible only after you have gone into the hole, and so on. It’s not the feelings that amaze me; I feel them all myself. It’s the idea that $20 million and a crew of more than a hundred crew members should have been devoted to dramatizing, over ninety minutes, an idea that any healthy child could express in a single simple sentence. Go ahead, smart guy, write that sentence. Read More