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...
screenwriter and movie journalist working as a production assistant in NYC, watches and reviews a new film everyday
ABOUT ME
My favorites? The personal cinema of John Cassavetes, the minimalist film noir of Jean-Pierre Melville and that early period of New Hollywood in the 70s (of course Polanski and Coppola.) I also focus on directors working today like the Safdie Brothers, Paolo Sorrentino, Jane Campion, Denis Villeneuve, Jordan Peele, Emma Seligman, David Cronenberg, and Hong Sang-soo.
At Columbia University, I specialized in media studies and cultural criticism. Here I was exposed to the great cultural critics of the 20th Century: Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Jean Baudrillard, Jonathan Rosenbaum and more. Although I disagreed with many of their takes, Sontag’s formalism and Kael’s socio-political commentary became the bedrock of my critical lens for movies.
But I'm also wary of the sort of ivory tower academicism that divorced many critics from audiences in the mid-century. I always kept an ear to the ground as a PA in film production and press & venue staffer at film festivals in New York. Twitter — while a very imperfect tool — has also become an essential data point for the modern movie critic, and I often report on my impressions of the online discourse there in my reviews.
In 2022, I set a challenge to watch and review a new movie every day. In addition to the long form reviews written below, I have catalogued nearly 1000 reviews on my Letterboxd (@msxviii). I hope you follow me on this journey!
Search
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...
Miles Stephenson
Mad God (2021), Phil Tippett [3.5/5]
Mad God follows a gas-masked protagonist as he descends into a psychotic nightmare in search of an object on his map. It's hard to...
Miles Stephenson
Five Easy Pieces (1970), Bob Rafelson [4.5/5]
Five Easy Pieces is the sophomore feature of Manhattan-born director Bob Rafelson, released in 1970, a year before he produced Peter...
Miles Stephenson
The Film Beat at East Hampton's Author's Night (2022)
On Saturday night, I attended the 18th annual East Hampton Author’s Night in a tented pavilion in Herrick Park. I heard it referred to as...
Miles Stephenson
One All the Way (2021) - Montauk Film Festival - Winner of the "Social & Cultural Short" Award
In his 2016 feature Paterson, indie legend Jim Jarmusch follows the daily hum drum of a poet bus driver (played by Adam Driver) as he...
Miles Stephenson
The Glass (2021) - Montauk Film Festival - Winner of the "Community Short" Award
At the 3rd annual Montauk Film Festival on Tuesday night, I attended the director's panel and screenings of four films: Cracked, Wasted...
Miles Stephenson
Tara Messenger of Death (2021) - Montauk Film Festival - Community Night at Montauk Point Lighthouse
At the 3rd annual Montauk Film Festival on Monday night, I attended the director's panel and screenings of five shorts: The Weedy One,...
Miles Stephenson
Five Hundred Calories (2020) - Montauk Film Festival - Women in Film Night at Solé East
At the 3rd annual Montauk Film Festival on Sunday night, I attended the director's panel and screenings of four inventive and sharp...
Miles Stephenson
The Rules of the Game (1939), Jean Renoir [5/5]
It's rare that a father-son duo becomes renowned in their respective crafts to the degree that impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste...
Miles Stephenson
Pickpocket (1959), Robert Bresson [3.5/5]
I have long been a fan of Robert Bresson's minimalism, as seen in A Man Escaped (1956) and L'Argent (1983); with his unique centering on...
Miles Stephenson
Come and See (1985), Elem Klimov [5/5]
Simply put, Come And See is the best war movie I’ve seen. It has displaced my previous favorites of Cimino's The Deer Hunter and...
Miles Stephenson
Ghost Dog, The Way of the Samurai (1999), Jim Jarmusch [4/5]
When legend of the indie New York scene and "No Wave Cinema" auteur Jim Jarmusch set out to write Ghost Dog, I wish I could have heard...
Miles Stephenson
Fitzcarraldo (1982), Werner Herzog [5/5]
The major set piece in Herzog's Fitzcarraldo — hauling a 320-ton steamship over a jungle mountain with 19th Century tech and indigenous...
Miles Stephenson
The Hamptons Fine Art Fair (7/14/22) - Impressions from a Formalist
After recently rereading Tom Wolfe’s satire of the abstract art world in The Painted Word, I was feeling particularly skeptical of modern...
Miles Stephenson
The United States of America (1975), Bette Gordon & James Benning [3.5/5]
Gordon and Benning’s The United States of America is an intriguing time capsule of 70s America and a proper introduction to structuralist...
Miles Stephenson
A Woman Under the Influence (1974), John Cassavetes [3.5/5]
In A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands bring two woundingly intimate performances; they are often so...