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Welcome to Esther on Film!
Hey! I’d like to welcome you to my new website. My name is Esther Rosenfield, and I’ve been writing about film, television, and video games for over ten years. I’ve drifted through various websites and blogs, most recently publishing my work through Medium. I decided it was time to make a permanent, serious home for … Continue reading Welcome to Esther on Film!
Patron Request: ‘Taipei Story’
Taipei Story is the first film I’ve seen from Edward Yang. It’s also one of the ones I hear about least often. This is probably down to its lack of availability in America until very recently, but I don’t think that’s the only reason. Discussion of Yang’s filmography is dominated by his meaty, massive epics: … Continue reading Patron Request: ‘Taipei Story’
Patron Request: ‘Blow Out’
I first watched Blow Out only a day or two after Elliot Rodger murdered 6 people and injured 14 more in the name of misogynist aggrievement. His manifesto and YouTube channel contained lengthy screeds against, among other things, women as a whole. He blamed women for his loneliness and isolation, citing his inability to enter … Continue reading Patron Request: ‘Blow Out’
Patron Request: ‘In This Corner of the World’
My patrons know me well. I knew nothing about In This Corner of the World going in, and I was delighted to discover that it’s something akin to an animated Nobuhiko Obayashi film. Besides the obvious medium-mixing creating stylistic parallels, its primary concerns — of the rough transition from wartime Japan to peacetime and the impact of … Continue reading Patron Request: ‘In This Corner of the World’
Patron Request: ‘Hard Boiled’
I can’t think of a movie with a better opening shot than Hard Boiled. A man pours a drink, downs it in one go, does a classic post-shot exhale, and all of a sudden pulls out a clarinet and starts to jam. On its face it’s a silly opening, but a no less electric one, … Continue reading Patron Request: ‘Hard Boiled’
Patron Request: ‘The Outsiders’
My associations with S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders are entirely filtered through my memory of middle school English classes, which is to say that those associations aren’t entirely positive. You don’t need me to tell you that the way American public schools teach you how to approach art is, at best, misguided. I remember the … Continue reading Patron Request: ‘The Outsiders’
Let’s Talk About The Gay Stuff in ‘It Chapter Two’
This article contains spoilers for It Chapter Two as well as the preceding film and the original novel. Like the Stephen King novel on which it’s based, It Chapter Two opens with a hate crime. Adrian Mellon (here played terribly by former director of note Xavier Dolan) kisses his boyfriend at a Derry carnival, and … Continue reading Let’s Talk About The Gay Stuff in ‘It Chapter Two’
Patron Request: ‘Redline’
Perhaps my expectations were skewed, but I was sort of expecting more racing in this movie about a big race. For all the discussion I’d heard about Redline and its bold art style and its experimental animation, I found that its narrative plays things far too safe. So much of the film’s runtime is taken … Continue reading Patron Request: ‘Redline’
Patron Request: ‘Perfect Blue’
While Satoshi Kon was best known as a director for his surreal, often abstract imagery, I find his debut film Perfect Blue more interesting as an editing exercise. There are plenty of striking images here, to be sure. What’s far more striking to me, though, is the way the film uses the cut to depict … Continue reading Patron Request: ‘Perfect Blue’
Patron Request: ‘Cameraperson’
It always rankles a little when someone draws a direct comparison between film (particularly documentary film) and memory. Memory is by its nature mutable and fluid. It changes with time, reshaped by its attached emotional context. Film, on the other hand, is static. While it can never be fully objective, its images cannot change once … Continue reading Patron Request: ‘Cameraperson’
