Definitives Archive | Deep Focus Review

Jurassic Park

Brian Eggert — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 05:00:24 +0000

In Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s marvelous visuals suspend his characters and, by extension, his audience in awe and revelation. Early in the film, a jeep transports skeptical scientists and experts to an ideal location within impresario John Hammond’s island theme park. A wide shot moves inward toward the spellbound faces of Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ian Malcolm, though Spielberg delays cutting to what has drawn their eyes. The director holds the shot, filling his audience with anticipation for whatever might evoke such a reaction. As the scene builds, Spielberg follows Grant, who removes his hat and stands up to get a better look. His mouth agape, Grant clumsily pulls his glasses off his face to reveal his bewildered eyes. The shot goes to Grant’s colleague and significant other, Dr. Ellie Sattler, who chatters on, mystified by a rare and extinct prehistoric plant she found on the island. Grant reaches back and turns her head to see what he sees, and her jaw drops mid-sentence. She, too, rises and removes her glasses, standing next to Grant in astonishment. The shot moves behind them, rising along with John Williams’ iconic score to greet a towering Brachiosaurus, a full-grown dinosaur whose long neck reaches […]

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The Sea Wolf

Brian Eggert — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 14:07:25 +0000

Wolf Larsen, the barbarous, intelligent, and vengeful despot who clings to his authority with cruelty and violence, is the unforgettable villain of 1941’s The Sea Wolf. Edward G. Robinson delivers a combustible performance that dominates the film, just as Larsen dominates his ship, the Ghost. A distinguished entry in Warner Bros.’s many literary adaptations of the era, this film version of Jack London’s novel features a richly baroque visual aesthetic and Oscar-nominated special effects, overseen by the brilliant direction of Michael Curtiz, a taskmaster himself. However, the picture’s voice stems from the talented screenwriter and actors, mindful of how the events onscreen mirrored their contemporary political dynamics. Like many historical and literary adaptations made by Warner Bros. during this period, The Sea Wolf is an anti-Nazi film that never mentions Nazism and an anti-Hitler film that presents a fictional counterpart to Hitler. It supplies a passionate message against the fascist ideologies that fuel authoritarians, and at a time when it mattered most. The Sea Wolf is at once a sterling example of prestige filmmaking in the Golden Age of Hollywood and an impassioned work that demonstrates how even commercial art can have a perspective. The full 4,500-word essay is currently […]

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Paths of Glory

Brian Eggert — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 05:00:06 +0000

Three French soldiers of The Great War brood in a makeshift cell. Their execution is scheduled for dawn. Cold walls surround them, offering no solace. One of them, Private Arnaud (Joe Turkel), curls up on the floor in despair. Another, Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker), waxes philosophical: “See that cockroach,” he says. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll be dead, and it’ll be alive. It’ll have more contact with my wife and child than I will. I’ll be nothing, and it’ll be alive.” The third soldier, Private Ferol (Timothy Carey), slaps his hand down and crushes the insect, “Now you got the edge on him.” The biting cruelty of military logic has labeled these three random soldiers guilty of a crime and placed them in an overnight death row. However, they were chosen at random to represent their companies for alleged cowardice on the battlefield, as opposed to an individual criminal deed. They are nothing more than pawns in a game of military politics. Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, the director’s most humanist work, is not only an antiwar film but also a depiction of the horrors of bureaucratic military hierarchies, overseen by corrupt officials. Kubrick’s 1957 film takes on the power-mongering and inequality […]

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eXistenZ

Brian Eggert — Wed, 28 May 2025 03:30:25 +0000

An early scene in eXistenZ finds game designer Allegra Geller, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, wandering around the parking lot of a country gas station—named Country Gas Station, funnily enough. As though investigating an alien world, she sniffs the petroleum, delights in kicking up dirt, and smiles with conspiratorial appreciation after tossing a stone at the gas tank and hearing the resultant clank. Upon first viewing, the viewer might wonder what this inconsequential scene is about, if anything. Only after the film has ended, when Cronenberg reveals that Allegra and others were playing a game called transCendenZ all along, does it come together. Any gamer knows that seemingly banal actions take on new meaning when presented through an artificial lens. Shopping, sleeping, eating, performing chores, and all of those things that might seem tedious in everyday life become fascinating details to explore because they were designed for the player to experience. Games that feature massive open worlds or offer meticulous character customizations receive praise for their ability to replicate minor details and tasks that add to the overall realistic texture of the game world. The more inconsequential the specifics, the more convincing the illusion. In this scene, Allegra does something […]

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Stalker

Brian Eggert — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 17:35:17 +0000

An uncanny cinematic landscape to explore, investigate, and reflect upon, Stalker is an immersive and unwavering search for meaning in terms of what appears onscreen and how audiences have responded since its release in 1979. Andrei Tarkovsky’s metaphysical epic unfolds in a post-apocalypse that serves as an entrenched allegory for the power of belief. Despite the ruined earth setting, this is not a commercial genre film populated by the usual shattered-world tropes of authoritarian rule, tribalism, retrofuturist technology, and desperate battles over resources. Although it contains some familiar aspects of the genre, the great Russian filmmaker repurposes them in a spiritual search for external and existential answers. Whether viewed as a metaphor for religious faith, a meditation on the mystery of consciousness, or a testament to the power of artistic creation, Stalker has continued to transfix and fascinate viewers and influence creatives. The director’s second foray into science fiction, after 1972’s brilliant Solaris, once again draws upon popular source material as a springboard for something more defiantly original, indefinable, and specific to Tarkovsky’s worldview and concerns as an artist. The full 3,700-word essay is currently posted on Patreon. To read it, you can purchase access individually. You can also join Deep Focus […]

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The Spirit of the Beehive

Brian Eggert — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 14:34:46 +0000

(Note: Published on August 29, 2024, this essay is a newly edited and expanded take on a review, originally published on March 7, 2022, to celebrate the release of Víctor Erice’s new film, Close Your Eyes.) In The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena), the innocence of a single child becomes an allegory for all of Spain. The story follows six-year-old Ana, whose wide-eyed curiosity and tragic resilience in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War are conveyed through her vivid imagination, fueled by the power of cinema. Filmmakers have often relied on children to access the purest form of emotions or the truest sense of humanity. However, when juxtaposed against a backdrop of trauma, violence, death, and corruption—and the monsters who create them—a child’s perspective will return the viewer to a time before we learned the many harsh lessons the world teaches, before we made endless moral compromises, and before we accepted or learned to compartmentalize so many awful truths. Writer-director Víctor Erice positions Ana—played by Ana Torrent, who would once again work with Erice in his 2024 return with Close Your Eyes—as a reminder of what people lost during the conflict. He frames the violence […]

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M

Brian Eggert — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 13:05:20 +0000

M, Fritz Lang’s 1931 masterpiece, follows a manhunt to catch a child murderer named Hans Beckert, played by Peter Lorre. When he’s eventually identified—by a blind man, no less—it is because Hans unconsciously whistles notes from Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” theme, from music written for Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 play, Peer Gynt. Drawing from folktales, Ibsen’s fantastical drama features a frenzied scene where trolls chase the hero. “Eat him!” the creatures shout. “Tear away both his ears and his eyes!” Lang undoubtedly saw a popular Berlin production of Peer Gynt in 1928 and found the sequence evocative. He includes a similar moment in M, when a vigilante mob ensnares Hans, clamoring, “Kill the rabid dog!” and “Kill the monster!” The twist is that, by the end, the most monstrous figure in the film isn’t Lorre’s character but the crowd—a bloodthirsty mob of grotesque faces worthy of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Lang’s film, one of the most influential and enduring in German cinema, demonstrates a sympathetic understanding of Lorre’s tormented character, while the mob draws Lang’s ire. Through subtle implications so slight that the Nazis in the Weimar Republic missed them, Lang associates the mob’s actions with […]

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Nocturama

Brian Eggert — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 18:45:16 +0000

Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama follows a band of guerillas who, in their youthful determination, coordinate several attacks on Paris landmarks. After, they retreat into a department store where, following many hours of idling, a police raid leaves them all dead. Bonello does not subscribe to the beliefs held by these toy soldiers acting in a revolution of misdirected idealism. He never catalogs their ideology beyond describing their state and capitalistic targets in the establishment. With equal measures of precision detail and abstraction, the 2016 film enters a dreamscape that is skewed with youthful passion and dubious intent, yet thrust by the initial certainty of propulsive action. Still, the question of Bonello’s specific artistic ambition lingers. Does he intend to exploit modern anxieties about political extremism in service of a thriller or make a statement about a political perspective? Neither, as it turns out, to polarizing effect. Nocturama is far more nebulous in its meaning than anything so straightforward, weighing history, aestheticism, and contemporary events in an esoteric package. Bonello’s characters have as much psychological depth as the mannequins displayed in the department store where they take refuge. His young terrorists have adopted an image and political philosophy like wearing a mask, […]

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All About My Mother

Brian Eggert — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 14:06:01 +0000

All About My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre) stands out among Pedro Almodóvar’s many films about the complexities of women—their ability to endure, reinvent themselves, and use performance as a means of discovering an authentic sense of self. Released in 1999, it remains the Spanish auteur’s most celebrated film in terms of critical appraisal and awards. It is also the picture that marked Almodóvar’s transition from Spain’s most internationally recognized and sensational enfant terrible to a measured and thoughtful dramatist. During the 1990s, the director adopted new tonalities and a pointedly melodramatic temperament. In All About My Mother, he softens the ostentatious mise-en-scène that defined his earlier work to explore, with intimate service to his characters, a theme articulated by Agrado, a transgender woman in the film: “A woman is more authentic the more she resembles what she dreams herself to be.” Whether occupying, for the moment, the role of a mother, nun, diva, or sex worker, women defy such simple labels in Almodóvar’s hands. All About My Mother celebrates the performative nature of selfhood that intermingles art and life, not only as a testament to the actresses to whom Almodóvar dedicates the film but also as a celebration of the […]

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Xiao Wu

Brian Eggert — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 14:09:40 +0000

A pickpocket, Xiao Wu describes himself as “a craftsman.” After all, he earns a living with his hands. In the first scene of Xiao Wu, the debut feature of Jia Zhangke, one of the most celebrated Chinese directors, the titular character boards a bus. He sidesteps the fare by claiming he’s a policeman, which the ticket collector doesn’t believe but also doesn’t question. After scheming his way on, Xiao Wu carefully lifts the wallet of the passenger sitting beside him. The camera then cuts to a Mao Zedong medallion hanging from the bus’ rearview mirror, as though the late Chairman Mao had witnessed this petty crime but, in his current state, remains helpless to do anything about it. The moment illustrates Jia’s interest in the transitional period between China’s Maoist era and the country’s radical reform into a globalized market economy in the 1990s. Centered on its dislocated character, a socially marginalized figure who drifts through his home city of Fenyang, unnecessary to society and therefore an outcast, Xiao Wu (known as Pickpocket in some Western markets) captures how some cannot keep pace with the nation’s rapid changes. Mutating from one era to the next, less in distinct cultural stages than […]

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