Articles

The Gulliver Effect: Screen Size, Scale and Frame, from Cinema to Mobile Phones

By Martine Beugnet

Problems with Kubrick: Reframing Stanley Kubrick through Archival Research

By James Fenwick

Read James’s blog piece: Stanley Kubrick and #MeToo

Feng Xiaogang’s Haunted Utopia, Chinese Modernity, and Carnivalesque Social Critique in the Era of Xi Jinping

By Yi Lu

Revisionary Metaphysics in Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980): On the Ontological Subversiveness of Psychedelic Sequences

By Vik Verplanken

Read Vik’s blog piece: Cinema and Subversion: Exploring the Ontologically Subversive Potential of Psychedelic Cinema

There Is No Such Thing as One Realism: Veritativeness in Andre Bazin’s Film Theory

By Lourdes Esqueda Verano

Looks That Kill: Double Indemnity (1944) Reimagined in Postmodern Neo-Noir and Television

By Michael Lipiner and Yael Maurer

Both films choose locales which embody the dubious moral nature of their protagonists and are crucial to their plots’ interest in legal loopholes. The muggy, foggy setting of Los Angeles in Double Indemnity is mirrored by the humid, tropical milieu of Body Heat’s South Florida, which also conveniently predicates the parallel device in both films hinging on state law technicalities…In their last scene together, Matty tells Ned that she loves him, leaving the viewer to question her motives and intent, as well as to doubt whether his feelings for her extend beyond lust. Like Matty, Ned is seduced by greed, the driving force of film noir that traditionally punishes the protagonists, but in this case rewards the female (anti-)heroine. Thus, Body Heat takes the classic noir formula to a newer, murkier place, leaving the viewer with reservations about what is deemed by the film as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.