The Dog Poop in “Roma,” Chief Brody’s Glasses, and Symbolism on Film
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Sigmund Freud said, yet often in the movies, a cigar means much, much more. It can symbolize power, stand in for the male phallus, or be representative of a lie, i.e. a smokescreen. Groucho Marx used his stogie to represent all three attributes in the characters he […]
The Academy Takes Two Steps Forward and One Step Back with the 2019 Oscar Nominations
Any batch of Oscar nominations can both delight and confound. Those this year were no exception. For every milestone like Black Panther that became the first superhero movie to receive a Best Picture nomination, there are the failures of the Academy to recognize smaller, indie fare like the heralded Eighth Grade, women directors, or actors […]
Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” is a Gorgeous and Haunting Tale of the Working Class
The opening image in Roma is one that starts off as mysterious, then turns monotonous, and finally, becomes a haunting metaphor for the plight of the working class. The image is of the outdoor tiles of a driveway being washed as buckets of water cascade across them again and again. We hear scrubbing, but the […]
