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...
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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 follow Claire Denis, the Safdie Brothers, Paolo Sorrentino, Emma Seligman, David Cronenberg, Cristian Mungiu, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Hong Sang-soo.
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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.
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In 2022, I watched and reviewed a new movie every day. I work full-time in TV now but log new movies + reviews as often as I can. In addition to the long form reviews written below, I have logged over 1k reviews on Letterboxd @msxviii. Let's chat about movies!
film reviews: About Me
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Miles Stephenson
The Glass (2021) directed by Tom Van Scoyoc - "Community Short" Award at The Montauk Film Festival
At the 3rd annual Montauk Film Festival on July 26th, 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...
Miles Stephenson
Zodiac (2007) VS Panic Room (2002), David Fincher [4/5 vs 3.5/5]
In the late 90s and early 2000s, David Fincher had one of the most immediately recognizable visual styles in the thriller genre and in...
Miles Stephenson
Interview with Brian De Palma and review of Blow Out (1981)
In August 2022, I had the opportunity to interview legendary independent director of the New Hollywood generation Brian De Palma in New...
Miles Stephenson
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Robert Altman [5/5]
McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a spyglass into the past of not only the American West but the art form of film. It's like a 70s Italian...
Miles Stephenson
Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Joseph Kosinski [4/5]
What is it that has action movie enthusiasts and avant-garde cinephiles alike praising Tom Cruise this summer, heralding him as the man...
Miles Stephenson
The French Dispatch (2021), Wes Anderson [3/5]
The French Dispatch has all the usual bells and whistles of a Wes Anderson feature. The precise overhead close-ups, the forced symmetry,...
Miles Stephenson
Crimes of the Future (2022), David Cronenberg [4.5/5]
David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future (2022) thrills as evocative, body horror sci-fi on first viewing, only revealing its political...
Miles Stephenson
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Paul Schrader [4.5/5]
Paul Schrader found his best existential loner in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), asking what does manliness and sexual...
Miles Stephenson
Sans Soleil (1983), Chris Marker [5/5]
Like an 1980s version of Dziga Vertov, a globe-trotting Chris Marker collects scenes of everyday life in Japan and Guinea-Bissau to study...
film reviews: Blog2
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