Jonathan Lack

1 month ago | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

For this week’s Movie of the Week, we’re doing something a little different, covering one movie, but over four days. The film is E.A. Dupont’s Varieté, from 1925, and instead of a ‘review,’ we shall be reading a very peculiar essay I wrote in graduate school, for a class on Psychoanalysis and cinema. It is presented in the form of 4 letters from my alter-ego, Dr. Johnathon R. Black, to a fictive colleague, Dr. Reginald G. Winterbottom.

1 month ago | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

For this week’s Movie of the Week, we’re doing something a little different, covering one movie, but over four days. The film is E.A. Dupont’s Varieté, from 1925, and instead of a ‘review,’ we shall be reading a very peculiar essay I wrote in graduate school, for a class on Psychoanalysis and cinema. It is presented in the form of 4 letters from my alter-ego, Dr. Johnathon R. Black, to a fictive colleague, Dr. Reginald G. Winterbottom.

2 months ago | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

I walked into Captain America: Brave New World with fairly low expectations, not justbecauseof thegeneralMarvelmalaiseof thepast six years, but for the extremely weird hodge-podge of properties this film follows up on: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (mostly bad despite some good moments), Eternals (Marvel’s worst movie), and The Incredible Hulk (a 17-year-old Marvel movie few people saw, has mostly been ignored since, and whose two main characters – Bruce Banner and Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’...

Jan 22, 2025 | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

David Lynch was, until his death last week, my favorite living American filmmaker, as you’ll probably know if you’ve read or listened to my work for any length of time.

Jan 19, 2025 | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

NOTE: This review contains spoilers for The Brutalist, specifically its ending. These days, I am inclined to love any movie carrying the kind of ambition Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist brings with it: three-and-a-half hours long, complete with a guaranteed Intermission built into the body of the film itself, its story spanning many years, filmed in a long-dormant format (VistaVision), with images that tower, envelop, and invite us to wander, to inhabit.