Essays Archives - Hammer to Nail https://www.hammertonail.com/category/editorial/essays/ What to Watch Wed, 16 Oct 2024 16:00:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.hammertonail.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/cropped-logo02-1-32x32.png Essays Archives - Hammer to Nail https://www.hammertonail.com/category/editorial/essays/ 32 32 MONSTER MOVIES https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/monster-movies/ https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/monster-movies/#comments Mon, 06 Aug 2018 19:20:42 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=29956 Donald Trump has a monster movie for you. The Others. It stars the MS-13 street gang (Tagline: “These aren’t people. These are animals.”) It features nasty women, Muslim terrorists, traitorous black athletes, Native American thugs, lying journalists, greedy Asians, disabled freaks, […]

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]]> https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/monster-movies/feed/ 3 Nick Toti’s “Digital Gods”- Season Two, Transmission One https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/digital-gods2-1/ Wed, 20 Jun 2018 21:56:29 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=29801 Welcome back, faithful Digital Gods readers! For those of you new to the column, I started writing it in 2016 after I’d noticed a gap in the film criticism I was reading on almost every indie film website. Everyone seemed […]

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]]> ON THE FRINGE, PART SEVEN: SHOTGUN STORIES (2007) https://www.hammertonail.com/reviews/on-the-fringe-7/ Wed, 18 Apr 2018 20:05:14 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=29448 Jeff Nichols’ award-winning directorial debut Shotgun Stories is a flawless film. This quality is a crucial distinction to make in discussing a film as part of my continuing “On theFringe” series, as this factor sets the movie apart from its (predecessor) compatriot pictures […]

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]]> ON THE FRINGE, PART FIVE: PERMANENT VACATION (1980) https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/on-the-fringe-5/ Wed, 04 Apr 2018 21:33:59 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=29357 One of the many hurdles over which I’ve needed to continuously hop in my “On the Fringe” series is the urgency to come up with synonyms and, ultimately, euphemisms for the descriptor “deceptively simple” in the proper encapsulation of films […]

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]]> ON THE FRINGE, PART FOUR: KILLER OF SHEEP (1978) https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/on-the-fringe-4/ Wed, 28 Mar 2018 20:49:20 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=29303 Accepting his long overdue honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards this year, the soft-spoken, wide-eyed filmmaker Charles Burnett first thanked all his friends and supporters present for their support, particularly those who were there back in the days when he “didn’t have […]

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]]> ON THE FRINGE, PART THREE: ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974) https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/on-the-fringe-3/ Wed, 21 Mar 2018 22:18:20 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=29240 Something was happening in the American cinema starting in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Among other progressions in societal mores, technology and legalities, this decade+ could arguably be considered a Golden Age of courageous truth-telling films that mine […]

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]]> ON THE FRINGE, PART TWO: THE EXILES (1961) https://www.hammertonail.com/reviews/on-the-fringe-2/ Tue, 06 Mar 2018 17:26:11 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=29144 In his seminal 1973 book The Country and the City, Raymond Williams lays out the great divide that he suggests exists between the concepts of “Natur[al]” and “native.” With apologies to Williams, a principle progenitor of “cultural studies” as an academic […]

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]]> Nick Toti on Tyler Hubby’s “Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present” https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/tony-conrad-doc/ Wed, 03 Jan 2018 21:58:23 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=28846 As a rule, I do not like movies like Tyler Hubby’s Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present; however, for many reasons, I very much did like Tyler Hubby’s Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present. Documentaries about the lives and careers […]

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]]> Movies About Museums https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/movies-about-museums/ Thu, 09 Feb 2017 23:56:06 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=27567 “A process in which no one wants to take a risk is too Dutch for me,” laments one of the embattled Spanish co-architects in Oeke Hoogendijk’s The New Rijksmuseum, a 2013 doc I caught up with over the holidays. The […]

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]]> Casey Affleck’s Bad Behavior Be Damned (or Why You Should Not Boycott “Manchester by the Sea”) https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/casey-affleck-boycott-wissot/ https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/casey-affleck-boycott-wissot/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2017 20:14:24 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=27379 To call Manchester by the Sea writer/director Kenneth Lonergan’s masterpiece is not an exaggeration. This is a near-flawless film. (And further proof that HBO needs to give Lonergan his own limited series a la Lisa Cholodenko’s Olive Kitteridge or Todd […]

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