Maitland McDonagh

New York

Writer and Editor at Freelance

Movie Reviewer/Created Vintage Gay Books substack newsletter Former Sr. Movies Editor https://t.co/NC8VdWSIrF Editor Riverdale Avenue Books,

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Articles

ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

May 1, 2024 | awfj.org | T. Callahan |Maitland McDonagh |Susan Granger |Susan Kamyab

David Leitch, emily blunt, Hannah Waddingham, Ryan Gosling, THE FALL GUY, universal pictures After their appearances on many TV talk shows, it’s obvious that Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are playful co-stars and had great fun filming their new action comedy The Fall Guy. So it’s too bad that the film kind of fizzles.
Simone Scafidi on Dario Argento and DARIO ARGENTO PANICO - Maitland McDonagh interviews

Feb 1, 2024 | awfj.org | Maitland McDonagh

0 Flares 0 Flares × Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento (2010) was the book that solidified my career as a movie writer, and it’s a pleasure to revisit Argento’s work all these years later. Argento was and is the maestro of Italian horror.
DARIO ARGENTO PANICO - Review by Maitland McDonagh

Jan 31, 2024 | awfj.org | Maitland McDonagh

0 Flares 0 Flares × Though its very title suggests tension and fear, Simone Scafidi’s Dario Argento Panico is a fairly conventional documentary that pays homage to the Italian auteur whose career stretches from 1970 to the present, And that’s not to criticize Panico: It’s first and foremost an appreciation of Argento’s substantial body of work, one that helped introduce the term giallo to English-speaking audiences and to make the aestheticization of violence–especially violence against...
HOUSEHOLD SAINTS (Restoration) - Review by Maitland McDonagh

Jan 3, 2024 | awfj.org | Maitland McDonagh

0 Flares 0 Flares × Revisiting Nancy Savoca’s Household Saints, based on the novel by Francine Prose, leaves me in a bad position. First and foremost, I’m not Italian, but to be fair, the Irish aren’t so far removed culturally, starting with the ethos of family before all; everyone and his brother says, “Irish and the Italians, cut from the same cloth,” and I’m leaning into the yes and except that Irish-Americans cut their straying progeny a bit more slack because… Irish.
THE ZONE OF INTEREST - Review by Maitland McDonagh

Dec 6, 2023 | awfj.org | Maitland McDonagh

0 Flares 0 Flares × Adapted from Martin Amis’ 2014 novel of the same title–and apparently significantly changed to narrow its narrative focus, The Zone of Interest revolves around an attractive young German couple coming of age–or rather, entering real adulthood–in the literal shadow of Auschwitz… the titular zone of interest.
ABIGAIL - Review by Maitland McDonagh

Dec 2, 2023 | awfj.org | Maitland McDonagh

0 Flares 0 Flares × An affectionate homage to ’70s exploitation movies, Abigail takes place in a small Alabama town, the kind of place where nothing much happens aside from the usual sports worship and school bullying because hey, hormonal teens will be hormonals teens and it will all shake down by the time they graduate and start recreating their parents’ lives.
WHITE RIVER - Review by Maitland McDonagh

Nov 27, 2023 | awfj.org | Maitland McDonagh

0 Flares 0 Flares × Directed and co-written by first-time feature filmmaker Ma Xue, White River blows past the stereotype that female filmmakers are more interested in swoony romance than sex. Pretty young Yan Fang (Yuan Tian) and her husband, Yuan Yong (Song Ningfeng), live in an undistinguished apartment building in Yanjiao–think, the Yonkers of Tokyo.
SILENT NIGHT - Review by Maitland McDonagh

Nov 23, 2023 | awfj.org | Maitland McDonagh

0 Flares 0 Flares × Legendary Hong Kong action director John Woo’s Silent Night is the kind of feature-length experiment that can only get underwriting when it’s attached to, well, a star like Woo… he’s not the only Kong Kong filmmaker whose movies made an admirably profitable transition to the US market, but he’s the one whose movies kicked ass from grindhouses to art cinemas.
EVERYONE WILL BURN - Review by Maitland McDonagh

Nov 20, 2023 | awfj.org | Maitland McDonagh

0 Flares 0 Flares × If not a dime a dozen, demonic children are no longer a novelty–from the vintage Children of the Damned (1964) to the Rosemary’s Baby and Omen series and the more recent The Orphan (2009) and its prequel there are scary there are plenty of predecessors to Everyone Will Burn, most of them predicated on the clash of unwitting parents whose youngsters–biological or adopted–are not what they seem.
THANKSGIVING - Review by Maitland McDonagh

Nov 15, 2023 | awfj.org | Maitland McDonagh

0 Flares 0 Flares × Once upon a long time long ago, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez collaborated on a project called Grindhouse, a loving recreation of the long-ago time when a single ticket at a low-rent theater paid for two features and a cornucopia of titillating trailers for movies that rarely lived up to the ballyhoo.