Noah Gittell
Movies > Politics
Film Critic. Essayist. Freelancer for hire. I blog at reelchange.net and can be reached at noahgittell@gmail.com. Non-partisan by nature.
PROJECTS
Salon
“Phantom Thread” and the truth about men at work
I’m not Reynolds Woodcock, but if I had his success and power, I’m afraid that I would be
Note: This essay contains some spoilers for the film "Phantom Thread."
I like to do my writing in the morning. I get up around 7, letting my wife and our five dogs sleep in, and tiptoe to the kitchen with my laptop in hand. These are precious moments. My thoughts are clearer in the morning, and the silence is an empty space my creativity can fill. Then my family wakes up. Sometimes, I try to keep writing...
LA Review of Books
By Immigrants, For Immigrants - Why "Casablanca" Still Matters
WHEN 56-YEAR-OLD ACTOR S. Z. Sakall escaped his native Hungary in 1939 and arrived in the United States to relaunch his acting career, he had a significant handicap: he spoke not a word of English. At lunch ...
Esquire
Why More Movies About Men Should Be Made by Women
Hllywood reacts to change very slowly. Maybe it's foolish to expect any different from an industry whose unofficial motto, coined by screenwriter William Goldman, is: "Nobody knows anything." Because of this uncertainty...
The Guardian
Failure to Relaunch: Matthew McConaughey Needs Another McConaissance
The critically loathed Stephen King adaptation The Dark Tower is the latest in a string of disappointments for the Oscar-winning actor, whose comeback has crumbled. But what should he do next?
The Economist
On monsters and masculinity: With “Colossal”, Anne Hathaway ...
ANNE HATHAWAY is a monster—at least that’s what we’ve been told. After breaking out in “The Princess Diaries” (2001), she rose ...
The Economist
"Detroit" struggles to find the right tone
It seems as if the film-makers could not decide whether to tell the story of the 1967 Detroit rebellion from the ground up or the top-down
The Guardian
Let's try that again … the most difficult scenes to film in cinema history
Let's try that again … the most difficult scenes to...
Slate
Life is sci-fi skepticism for the Trump era
Outer space is humankind’s most tantalizing unknown, too vast to comprehend, but just beyond our reach. Since Georges...
The Economist
On death's door: A new documentary brings obituary writers out of the shadows
TODAY is an era of maximum content, with more films and television being made than at any time in history. It’s debatable whether the sheer quantity of pop culture is a good thing, but one clear benefit is that there is now room for every marginalised group to have the spotlight turned on them—even the authors of death.
The Guardian
When big screen reunions work...and when they don't
The team behind Oscar-nominated crime thriller Hell and High Water have just announced a new project, but what can they learn from other re-teams that have and haven’t been successful?
The Guardian
Why Netflix's "Skip Intro" feature is bad news for classic films
The ability to avoid watching the opening credits of certain titles is a sign that the company lacks reverence for cinema history
The Guardian
The La La Land backlash: why have critics turned on the Oscar ...
The La La Land backlash: why have critics turned on...
washingtoncitypaper.com
Moonlight Wins Best Picture In A Historic Oscars Snafu
Moonlight Wins Best Picture In A Historic Oscars Sn...
The Guardian
Why we need to stop saying 'this is the movie we need right now'
A devastating election result has led film critics to stress the importance of cinema as a political force but is it an overly optimistic notion?