Miles Stephenson
the textbook approach of Gandhi (1982), Richard Attenborough [2/5]
A heartening story told through the visual equivalent of a high school history textbook or as some people have called it: the ultimate...
top of page
my taste in movies
I love the moody vérité style of Cassavetes, the minimalist noir of Jean-Pierre Melville, the epic scope of Lean, and that mix of post-60s hippie auteurs and film school movie brats that formed New Hollywood. For directors working today, I like Claire Denis, the Safdie Brothers, Paolo Sorrentino, Emma Seligman, David Cronenberg, Cristian Mungiu, Nicolas Winding Refn, Hong Sang-soo.
At Columbia I took up media studies and cultural criticism. Here I was exposed to the great 20th C. cultural critics: Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Paul Schrader, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Robert B. Ray. Although I disagree with many of their takes, Sontag’s "Against Interpretation" formalism and Kael’s rejection of sappy moralism and eye for creative "trash" became the bedrock of my critical lens for movies.
In 2022, I watched and reviewed a new movie every single day. I'm a writer and producer in TV now but log new movies + reviews often. The posts below fall into three categories: my quick takes, full film reviews, and essays. Read more on my Letterboxd: @msxviii
film reviews: About Me
Search
Miles Stephenson
my take on The Beyond (1981), directed by Lucio Fulci
Lucio Fulci's The Beyond is not my thing but I like that it exists! I’m not opposed to seeing Fulci as an artist that paints in gore...
Miles Stephenson
my take on The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), directed by Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway brings his dark and perverted sensibility to The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). It's this sensibility,...
Miles Stephenson
the triumph of tech over art in Jurassic Punk (2022) [3.5/5 stars]
Why do computer-generated special effects in movies today look so shitty? Despite some outliers like the spellbinding Avatar: The Way of...
Miles Stephenson
the wasteland texture of Escape from New York (1981), John Carpenter [4/5]
Escape from New York works because John Carpenter doesn't fight the tiny $6 million budget. He leans into it to curate a jury-rigged,...
Miles Stephenson
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023), Christopher McQuarrie [3/5]
Dull camerawork and Marvel-tier green screen artificiality from the first installment in the series shot on digital (it shows!) Compare...
Miles Stephenson
Ronin (1998), John Frankenheimer [3/5]
If Heat (1995) and Mission Impossible (1996) had a baby that took itself too seriously, hired a weirdly melodramatic composer that uses...
Miles Stephenson
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), Tsai Ming-liang [4/5]
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) has been called many things: a Taiwanese Last Picture Show, a highbrow Cinema Paradiso, a boring snoozefest,...
Miles Stephenson
Interview with Cinematographer Matias Boucard on Athena (2022): The Alexa 65, Romain Gavras, etc.
The most impressive element of Athena, Romain Gavras‘ protest epic turned Greek tragedy, is the cinematography by Matias Boucard, whose...
Miles Stephenson
Z (1969), Costa-Gavras [4.5/5]
A Ballad of Liberal Democracy & the Tendrils of Glass Tyrants... In the port city of Thessaloniki in 1963, a high profile political...
Miles Stephenson
Ambulance (2022), Michael Bay [3/5]
Commercial Auteurism... I grew up in the early 2000s and my first memory of a summer blockbuster on the big screen is Michael Bay's...
Miles Stephenson
The Square (2017), Ruben Östlund [3/5]
An Unwieldy Satire of the Art World... In a couple of scenes in The Square, Ruben Östlund's supposed satire of the art world, we witness...
Miles Stephenson
R.M.N. (2022), directed by Cristian Mungiu [4/5] - HIFF
How to Make a Political Film... Cristian Mungiu first made waves in the international festival circuit with his political film 4 Months,...
Miles Stephenson
The Exiles (2022), Violet Columbus & Ben Klein [4/5] - HIFF
Documenting the Price of Dissent... The energizing tightrope act at the heart of The Exiles (2022) is balancing Christine Choy’s...
Miles Stephenson
Don't Worry Darling (2022), Olivia Wilde [2/5]
Don't Worry Darling (2022) has all the makings of a Gen Z smash hit; a talented lead actress who appeared in the biggest horror movie of...
Miles Stephenson
Barbarian (2022), Zach Cregger [4/5]
It's an exhilarating trap of the horror genre that it can exploit fears and paranoias unique to a specific time to weaponize an...
Miles Stephenson
Perfect Blue (1997), Satoshi Kon [4.5/5]
Born during the Disney Renaissance, I grew up on mostly American animation yet every now and then an episode of late 90s Pokémon would...
Miles Stephenson
First Reformed (2017), Paul Schrader [3/5]
The key to understanding what First Reformed tries to achieve is Schrader’s identification with slow cinema. In interviews, Paul Schrader...
Miles Stephenson
Nope (2022), Jordan Peele [3.5/5]
There is a gallery of moments in the history of horror that have seared themselves into the public dread like the folklore of yore. The...
Miles Stephenson
King of New York (1990), Abel Ferrara [4/5]
The best thing about Abel Ferrara's hyper-stylish 1990 neo-noir King of New York is that it's so damn cool. The script is sloppy in...
film reviews: Blog2
bottom of page