It's Pete's Blog
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Tropical Malady” is utterly strange, the first movie I can remember in quite a while that I started again from the beginning immediately after finishing. The film begins as a meandering contemporary romance between a young Thai solider named Keng and a naive farm boy named Tong. Then, about halfway in, the narrative…
I have to admit, I’ve never been much of a Western guy. In college, I watched (and really enjoyed) “High Noon” and “Unforgiven” for a class on masculinity in film. (Aside: Here’s a paper I wrote contrasting the two for that class [PDF]. I haven’t read it in well over a decade, but I just…
Jeeze, what a way to follow up “Get Out” and “A Man Escaped.” The former of those two, in which a young Black man is lured to the home of a wealthy white couple under false pretenses with horrific results, is a commentary on the fraught racial politics of its time. The latter is a…
Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. John 3:7–8 (KJV) Each of these moments reflects a shattering…
I hadn’t seen Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” before I watched it a couple of nights ago, and part of me was concerned that my enjoyment would suffer for it. Even though I hadn’t actually sat down to watch the movie, I figured I might have absorbed enough of it through cultural osmosis to demystify and…