SIFF Notes
aesthetic: fifty-cent word typically employed by film critics afraid just to say "style"
cinema vérité: shaky camera
cinematic: like a movie
cinematography: pretty pictures that move; typically preceded by an adjective ("stunning," "dreamlike," "flat")
coming-of-age: loss-of-virginity
dark comedy: human suffering played for laughs
deconstruction: futile, academic exercise
docudrama: fake realism
Dogme: low-budget, shot on video, Danish
eccentric: mentally ill; also, patronizing
eclectic: corny
experimental: amateurish, meaningless, afraid of success
film noir: overstyled (see "aesthetic") depiction of archaic film archetypes--such as existential private detectives and thugs--shot in moody black and white
harrowing: manipulative
homage: plagiarism
human spirit: sentimental component of the viewing audience most likely to be pandered to by cowardly filmmakers
identity: homosexuality
magical realism: unwilling suspension of disbelief, usually in Spanish
meditation: synonym for "movie that takes itself too seriously"
operatic: gratuitous, violent
psychological: quasi-intellectual, violent
psychosexual: gay, violent
quirky: gay, cloying
redemption: the inevitable destination of all protagonists
road picture: genre whose chief elements include unshaven men, unwashed cars, infinite highways, and a search for they know not what
self-conscious: intellectually and morally lazy
semi-autobiographical: autobiographical
seriocomic: neither serious nor funny
sociopolitical: leftist
Tarantinoesque: violent, derivative (see also, "dark comedy," "homage," "self-conscious"); most commonly used to describe films made by recent film-school graduates; not necessarily applicable to the work of Quentin Tarantino
tone poem: a long series of somber, unintelligible images (see also, "meditation")
uplifting: gay
visceral: see "harrowing"
visual fabric: see "aesthetic"
visual language: see "visual fabric"
visual texture: see "visual language"
