Titus Techera is the executive director of the American Cinema Foundation.
Posts by Titus Techera
May 19, 2022
My previous essays reviewed two Progressive visions of manliness. Michael Mann’s HBO series
Tokyo Vice reduces contemporary Japan to racism, sexism, and homophobia. Michael Bay’s
Ambulance relatedly gives us a contemporary America where ethnic minorities, strong, independent women, and gay protagonists vanquish an evil white man.
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May 12, 2022
Film critics recently have been trying to encourage their audiences to return to theaters—cinema, after all, is a lot more impressive on a big screen and in the company of people who share our emotions.
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May 05, 2022
One of the most stylish of American directors, Michael Mann, who made
Heat and
The Insider (earning three Oscar nominations), is now producing the HBO series
Tokyo Vice and has directed its disappointing first episode.
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April 28, 2022
I will close this series on film noir with
Laura, because it’s altogether more beautiful and it has something of a happy ending. In being the most beautiful noir, it also involves the most sophisticated reflection on beauty in its relation to American society and to tragedy.
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April 21, 2022
Classic film noir wanted to reveal to America the depth of the problem of ambitious men in a democracy through crime stories—detectives, criminals, and victims caught in the quest for justice after the quest for happiness leads to catastrophe.
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April 06, 2022
My first film noir essay was on
The Maltese Falcon, whose ambitious protagonist, private detective Sam Spade, chooses justice over an uncertain promise of happiness, the love of a dangerous woman.
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March 30, 2022
Recently I spoke at Hillsdale College on film noir as part of a program that introduced audiences to four of the most impressive movies in the genre that defined the tough detective in America and the less popular type of doomed romantic.
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March 23, 2022
My long series on Oscar movies is coming to an end with angry words about Hollywood. To summarize, I liked Wes Anderson, loved Paul Thomas Anderson, was amused by Ridley Scott, disappointed by Steven Spielberg, and disgusted by Guillermo Del Toro.
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March 03, 2022
Guillermo del Toro won Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for
The Shape Of Water (2017), a movie infamous for a leading lady so desperate for intimacy that she makes love to a fish, probably the best metaphor for the ongoing moral collapse of the women who like such movies.
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February 24, 2022
My series on cinematic nostalgia continues—after Wes Anderson’s Francophilia, Ridley Scott’s Italian farce, and Spielberg’s Puerto Rican fiasco, here’s a California story: Paul Thomas Anderson’s ninth feature film,
Licorice Pizza, the only Hollywood movie made last year with some reason to be remembered.
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