Every Frame a Painting

A brief analysis of one aspect of Bong Joon-ho's great film Mother (2009). WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS. For educational purposes only.

A brief analysis of Bart Layton's The Imposter (2012). WARNING: SPOILS EVERY GODDAMN THING.

One overlooked aspect of Spielberg is that he's actually a stealth master of the long take. From Duel to Tintin, for forty years, he has sneakily filmed many scenes in a single con...

Looking for a unique lateral tracking shot? Consider this example from Mamoru Hosoda's excellent film Wolf Children (2012). NO SPOILERS.

If you love visual comedy, you gotta love Edgar Wright, one of the few filmmakers who is consistently finding humor through framing, camera movement, editing, goofy sound effects a...

Even though Martin Scorsese is famous for his use of music, one of his best traits is his deliberate and powerful use of silence. Take a glimpse at fifty years of this simple techn...

There are filmmakers we love and then there's Michael Bay. Even if you dislike him (as I do), Bay has something valuable to teach us about visual perception. This is an exploration...

Four years after his passing, we still haven't quite caught up to Satoshi Kon, one of the great visionaries of modern film. In just four features and one TV series, he developed a...

Is there a better way of showing a text message in a film? How about the internet? Even though we’re well into the digital age, film is still ineffective at depicting the world we...

Robin Williams was a genius, but he was also a dedicated craftsman who explored how an actor could express character through movement. Join me in honoring this tiny facet of his wo...

For sheer directorial craft, there are few people working today who can match David Fincher. And yet he describes his own process as “not what I do, but what I don’t do.” Join me t...

In drama, two characters walk into a room. Each wants something from the other. The question of the scene is: who gets what they want?

Characters make choices which they cannot take back. The question is: how do you show it visually? Here’s one solution from Snowpiercer. Warning: SPOILS ENTIRE FILM.

Some filmmakers can do action. Others can do comedy. But for 40 years, the master of combining them has been Jackie Chan. Let’s see how he does it. The 9 Principles of Action Comed...