Email Author Zachary Wigon

2013 Stories by Zachary Wigon

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  Teens Caught Between Guns and Cameras in The Dirties

  published October 2, 2013

  Playing like a Hollywood found-footage teen movie by way of Funny Games' Michael Haneke, Matthew Johnson's The Dirties explores... More >>

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  Holding its Exposition till the End, The Last Day of August Sets Itself Up for Failure

  published October 2, 2013

  The Last Day of August undertakes an enormous gamble, a risk assumed by films that withhold crucial information until the end: Will the... More >>

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  Dracula 3D Isn't Quite Campy Enough

  published October 2, 2013

  The connection between sex and death announces itself throughout all vampire movies. Yet few takes literalize the link as brazenly as Dario... More >>

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  A Time Capsule, Ahead of its Time, of 1983 Bronx Graffiti Culture in Wild Style

  published September 25, 2013

  At a moment when documentaries often feel compelled to blur the reality/fiction border for the sake of entertainment, something refreshing can... More >>

• Drinking Buddies Is an Honest, Affecting Romance

  published August 21, 2013

  There is a moment of silent incompatibility in Joe Swanberg's Drinking Buddies that illuminates the entirety of a relationship in a... More >>

• The Artist and the Model: One Mustn't Treat One's Audience Like Ignorant Children

  published July 31, 2013

  John Berger quipped, "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at," an observation recalled by this anachronistic picture of... More >>

• Drift Finds Its Narrative Doing Just That

  published July 31, 2013

  Not so much drifting as veering between storylines, Ben Nott and Morgan O'Neill's Drift often feels like a film with narrative ADD.... More >>

• A Woman Is a Woman: Revisiting Godard's Vision of Romantic Warfare

  published July 31, 2013

  Few works of cinema are as gleefully alive as Jean-Luc Godard's A Woman Is a Woman, made when the conventions of storytelling were fast... More >>

• 1963's The Servant Exemplifies a Key Break in Cinematic Storytelling

  published July 17, 2013

  Exemplifying a key break in cinematic storytelling, Joseph Losey's The Servant, from 1963, marks the moment where the direct "cinema of... More >>

• The Timelessness of Distance and Alienation in L'Avventura

  published July 10, 2013

  "It's hard, keeping a relationship going when one's here and the other's there—but it's easy, too," one of the characters in... More >>

• I'm So Excited! is a Minor Work by a Major Master

  published June 26, 2013

  With his anxious parable I'm So Excited! Pedro Almodóvar imagines a plane malfunction not as a pretext for thrills, as in... More >>

• The Lottery of Birth Is Like a Thought-Provoking Dinner Party

  published June 19, 2013

  Displaying incandescent theorizing yet lurching storytelling, The Lottery of Birth parses modern societies in a profound, haphazard... More >>

• Storm Surfers 3D. . . In 3D

  published June 12, 2013

  Have you ever seen a killer wave, mate? Well, have you ever seen a killer wave . . . in 3D? This question resounds above all when watching... More >>

• Wish You Were Here, Straight From the Cambodian Tourist Board

  published June 5, 2013

  Opening with a postcard-perfect vista of a Cambodian beach, followed with a sequence that could have been scripted by the Cambodian tourism... More >>

• Literally-titled Triumph of the Wall Tackles a Novel (Also, Boring) Subject

  published May 29, 2013

  "I'm not really sure what the focus of the film is anymore," Bill Stone states early in Triumph of the Wall, a documentary unlike any... More >>

• Brooklyn Film Festival 2013 Picks

  published May 29, 2013

  Entering its 16th year, the Brooklyn Film Festival opens May 31 in a Williamsburg that has gone, in the span of a few years, from... More >>

• Now You See Me Gets Tricky in the CGI Era

  published May 29, 2013

  Something's misguided about a film built around magic in the digital era. When Georges Méliès transferred illusions to cinema... More >>

• Epic Charms, but in the Most Traditional Manner

  published May 22, 2013

  Is calling a film's narrative structure "airtight" a compliment or a pejorative? Clockwork storytelling can entertain, yet such mechanisms can... More >>

• Peeples is a Well-Meaning Farce

  published May 8, 2013

  Recently, African-American–directed relationship movies have hewed toward either incongruous absurdity (Think Like a Man), overt... More >>

• Sightseers: A Jet-Black Comedy With Murders

  published May 8, 2013

  Some couples are weird, right? Like two people who just got off the spaceship together from Planet Them, speaking their secret language. Chris... More >>

• Love Is All You Need Is Hollywood Romance Through A Euro Funhouse Mirror

  published May 1, 2013

  Some things are charming about European films that ape Hollywood, the same way that seeing yourself reflected through a funhouse mirror can... More >>

• Confident Debut Dead Man's Burden Tries a Turn at a Mythic Genre

  published May 1, 2013

  The weight of genre is a curious thing. First-time filmmakers venturing into codified realms of storytelling can get trapped by anxiety of... More >>

• François Ozon Does His Best Post-modern Hitchcock with In the House

  published April 17, 2013

  The supreme testament to Hitchcock is that no matter how many years pass, his work exerts an ever-stronger influence. Just last month came... More >>

• Herman's House Observes the Striving of a Life Spent in Solitary Confinement

  published April 17, 2013

  Life often doesn't have a third act, and true stories, rather than folding themselves into neat resolutions, are thready, serrated messes.... More >>

• In Trance, The Crime (And Confusion) Are In The Mind

  published April 3, 2013

  The payoff for solving puzzle films is a collaborative rush—in working out the filmmakers' jigsaws, viewers are invited into the... More >>