Author Nafis Shafizadeh

My concern is with a general movement of reaction and conservative reassurance in the contemporary Hollywood cinema. — Andrew Britton in Blissing Out: The Politics of Reaganite Entertainment (1986) Certain ...

Puya navigated the Los Angeles traffic like a seasoned pro, without the help of an app. Its streets, traffic lights, accidents, stalled cars, make-or-break freeway decisions, whimsical lane choices; but no horn...

Several years ago, my wife and I spent a fall week in a remote cabin in the hills of Big Sur. We spent the time mostly enjoying the seclusion of the cabin and its immediate surroundings, spending languid aftern...

The Patsy and The Struggle of Jerry Lewis In 1995, the novelist and critic Gilbert Adair published his Flickers: An Illustrated Celebration of 100 Years of Cinema. The year, by most historical reckonings, mark...

Film criticism from literary writers is a tricky business. I am of course using literary as a discursive term rather than a hard and fast category; one indeed can make the argument that all film criticism shoul...

Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks. – General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove  Death h...

I’m a sucker for a good epigraph. A good epigraph can put the reader in the right state of mind for what follows, creating in her consciousness what film critic Manny Farber referred to as “negative space” – th...