I love movies. I have loved movies all my life. I grew up on them. When I was eight years old, I managed to convince myself I would make movies when I grew up. Now I am in the process of getting a degree in Film Studies. I write about film more than ever before, partly because I have to for my classes, mostly because I enjoy it, because I have something to write about. Sometimes it helps me understand the film better; sometimes it helps me understand myself better.
I created this blog as a place to showcase my work, and also as an incentive to keep writing reviews, analyses, and essays over breaks, when there’s no one here to grade me.
I have tried many times, and failed, to explain in a coherent manner why it is that I love films. Here is my best—and most coherent—guess.
Drive screenwriter Hossein Amini’s directorial debut takes its title from the English derivation of Janus,
the two-faced Roman god who stands at the cusp of the new year, simultaneously
musing backward at recent lessons and experiences, and peering forward to the
murky and elusive future ahead, a guardian at the crossroads of the past and
present. The reference implies the twin forces of duplicity and shifting
circumstances that swirl in the fragrant atmosphere of The Two Faces of January, an old-school, sly, seductive Southern
Europe-set tale of moral compromise and misdirection. Based on the Patricia Highsmith
novel of the same name, Amini’s film has its own two faces; it’s at once an
involving character drama and a gripping suspense movie, a pleasurable period piece
of precision and class and a tight and tidy thriller as shrewd, sleek, and
scintillating as its characters.