Film Criticism

Many of the essays I've written about film have been for Bright Wall/Dark Room, an online magazine "devoted to looking at what happens when we bring our whole selves to the movies. It’s about the relationship between films and individual human beings, between cinema and the business of being alive."

KAT’S TOP FILMS OF THE DECADE

Best movie from every year this decade: MAGIC MIKE XXL. But in all sincerity, here are the individual movies from each year of this past decade that have really stuck with me…

RESERVOIR HORSES

The first film studies course I took in college, which inspired me to declare it as my major, was an in-depth study of the works of Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, and John Cassavetes. I mostly chose film studies as my major because I wanted a free pass to win any argument about movies with anyone who couldn’t start in with, “Well, as a film scholar…”

HOW ABOUT THINKING PEOPLE SHOULD ACCEPT ME FOR WHO I AM WITHOUT MY HAVING TO CHANGE?

A lot is being made of the impact Lena Dunham’s new HBO series Girls is having, and how refreshing it must be for all of us twenty-something single white women to finally see accurate reflections of ourselves on television for the very first time.

31 SCARY MOVIES DIRECTED BY WOMEN

In front of the camera, there is a rich catalogue of women who have come to define the face of the scary movie: Jamie Lee Curtis in her screen debut as Laurie in the Halloween series. Mia Farrow’s haunted womb, Shelley Duvall with a kitchen knife, Rie Ino’o as Sadako in Ringu, Linda Blair’s spider-walk down the stairs, Heather O’Rourke as the tow-headed Carol Anne pursued by a Poltergeist… the list goes on and on.

WHEN I GROW UP

In college, I worked for my school’s “behind the scenes” offices, spending summers working for the school magazine or the alumni relations office—and putting in a few hours each week as a de facto telemarketer, shaking down alumni for donations. The highlights of these experiences were the times when I got to work the annual reunion, where alumni from every fifth graduating class returned to campus for a long weekend of seminars, reminiscing, and lots of beer.  

IF YOU FAIL GYM, YOU’LL NEVER GET INTO COLLEGE

I was twelve years old when Never Been Kissed came out twelve years ago. Even then I think I knew that there was something creepy about the conceit of an adult posing as a high school student and then falling into a love triangle with an actual teenager and a teacher unaware of the disguise.

WONDER WOMEN

So, you've seen Wonder Woman, contributing to its record-breaking opening weekend, the highest grossing ever for a film directed by a woman. Now what? I'd like to suggest to you a whole host of awesome movies (and even some TV shows, plays, and a music video) about badass women and men–which were all directed by women!

WHAT IS A MONSTER?

In my high school English class, we were taught that there are many definitions of what we consider to be monstrous.  A monster does not necessarily have to be a boogeyman hiding under the bed, or a werewolf lurking in the Yorkshire moors.  A monster is something that scares us and threatens us; something inherently different to what we are. 

DON’T THINK ABOUT IT.

I was twenty, and had just graduated from college a few months prior. My internship had yielded an unbelievable job offer that everyone told me was foolish to pass up. However, I’d already planned a gap year to travel, and that was not something I wanted to turn down. So off I went to Australia for six months, and that’s where I met him.

THE END OF MAIN STREET IS JUST THE BEGINNING AGAIN

Gary Ross’ Pleasantville is not really a movie about time travel. While high school seniors, twins David and Jennifer (played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon), do suddenly find themselves in a world 40 years earlier than their own, the real adjustment they make is traveling into a strictly rule-bound world of fiction.