For the Fourth: Some Highlights from The Reveal Archives (and a Holiday Sale)
We’re taking the week off, so why not catch up by reading some of our favorite pieces from the last year (and enjoy a 20% discount on annual subscriptions)?
It’s the week of Independence Day and we here at The Reveal are using it as an opportunity to take a break from publishing new pieces and reviews until next week rolls around. In the meantime, why not take a moment to catch up with some favorite pieces you might have missed?
We’re also going to use this small break to offer a big sale. From today through Sunday, you can get an annual subscription to The Reveal for 20% off the regular price. That means for a mere $40 you can get a year’s worth of access to all our content and our vital comments section. And, as we like to remind you from time to time, we appreciate everyone who reads The Reveal, but it’s the paid subscriptions that allow us to keep this newsletter going and growing.
Without further ado, here are some of our favorite archival pieces from the last twelve months.
Keith Phipps
‘The Mist’ Is the Timeliest Horror Movie of 2023: Is The Mist, a horror movie released in 2007 based on a novella published in 1980, actually the perfect movie about our current moment? Logic would say, “no.” I offered a counter argument.
On Cats on Film: Cats have generally had a rough time in movies. Is there something innate to their cat nature that explains this? (Note: I should probably do an update or maybe even a new piece bringing in A Quiet Place: Day One, a very good movie but also an excellent cat movie).
Josh & Stephen & Lara & Sherilyn & Kelly & Billy: Inspired by Challengers I revisited an early ‘90s moment when menages a trois (and movies featuring Baldwins and members of the Twin Peaks cast) were briefly in vogue.
The ‘80s in 40: ‘Poltergeist’: My ongoing trip through ‘80s movies, one quarter at a time, landed on a creepy movie deeply rooted in both its place (the American suburbs) and time (the dawn of the Reagan ‘80s).
My Mother, the Movies, and Me: This one is too recent to have even reached the archives. It’s one I hesitated to write but I’m glad I did. I’ve often processed life through movies and moviegoing, and that’s extended to my mother’s decline and recent death.
Scott Tobias
The Broken Civilizations of Alex Garland: The controversy surrounding the presumed politics of Garland’s recent film Civil War often missed the larger context of a career obsession with the making and unmaking of societies. This piece connects the dots between four different films: The screen adaptation of his novel The Beach, the modern zombie film 28 Days Later, the Garland-scripted Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation Never Let Me Go, and the comic-book movie Dredd.
Woody Allen in Exile: For decades, Woody Allen’s moviemaking prolificacy was a mostly pleasurable annual habit for cinephiles. Then longstanding sexual assault allegations finally gained traction in America, essentially ending his viability with major distributors and stars. With his 50th (and possibly final) movie, Coup de Chance, slipped quietly into a few theaters, I looked at his last four features and saw what happened when far fewer people were watching. (This piece was for Paid Subscribers only, but we’re opening it up to everyone today.)
The Quaffable Whines of Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti: Two great tastes that taste great together. With The Holdovers reuniting director Alexander Payne with leading man Paul Giamatti nearly 20 years after Sideways, I look at the special collaboration between two men who find the hidden soul lurking within Giamatti’s comic curmudgeons.
Why ‘Game Night’ is the Perfect Modern Studio Comedy: For my money, Game Night is as funny and watchable an original comedy as a major studio has produced in the last 10 or 20 years. But it also suits a model for blockbuster comedy that incentivizes giant setpieces that don’t always serve the genre well, especially in ostensibly more character-based films like No Hard Feelings. (Yes, I’m the type of person who can take a glass-half-empty view of Game Night being a delight.)
The Spirits of Normandy: Almost exactly a year ago, I turned my first trip to France into this reflection on seeing Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan after visiting the haunted terrain of Omaha Beach and Pointe du Hoc in Normandy. There’s tremendous power in touring the area and imagining the horror that unfolded that day, which is the modern landscape brings to life in some ways and obscures in others.