Lauren
Lauren Humphries-Brooks is a writer, editor, and media journalist. She holds a Master’s degree in Cinema Studies from New York University, and in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh. She regularly contributes to film and pop culture websites, and has written extensively on Classical Hollywood, British horror films, and the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres. She currently works as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader.
The Irishman has been severally interpreted as Scorsese’s elegy, as an attempt to kill the mob movie once and for all, and as the final culmination of his career. But while the film certainly deals with the fears and reflections of age, it is more about what brings […]
Over the past few years, the increase of franchise reboots (or attempted reboots) has given more than a few people pause, even more so when typically male films and franchises are attempted with female cast. While Ocean’s 8 and Ghostbusters had some measure of success (despite the fury […]
Ida Lupino has gone through a re-evaluation recently, lifting her from the ranks of a female director occasionally referenced for a single contribution to cinema to her rightful place as a major auteur. This is thanks in part to a renewed focus on female filmmakers and the efforts […]
At one point in Robert Eggers’s nightmarish dreamscape The Lighthouse, Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) holds forth over the cowering form of Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson). Wake curses his acolyte to the depths with intimations of mythology, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Old Testament fire-and-brimstone, as the camera maintains a […]
For those not yet inaugurated into the oeuvre of influential B-movie producer Val Lewton, the Criterion Channel has you covered. The most famous of Lewton’s films is the Jacques Tourneur-directed Cat People, starring Simone Simon as a haunted young woman who may or may not turn into a […]
There are some films that fail to live up to their hype, and there are others whose hype, it seems, fails to live up to them. This is certainly true of Mati Diop’s remarkable directorial debut Atlantics, now showing at NYFF57. Atlantics has received exceptional praise out of […]
Parasite is probably one of the most deceptive films in theaters this year, but not because it looks like one thing and proves to be another. Rather, it is exactly what it looks like, and yet also isn’t, like Wittgenstein’s rabbit-duck. Revealing its basic premise won’t spoil it […]