Originally published in The California Aggie

J. Edgar Hoover is one of those unfortunate political figures to whom history has not been especially kind. Is it possible to truly understand anything about a guy who bounces back and forth between paranoid Communist-phobe and cross-dresser in the public eye? But surely there must have been a man behind the mockery. At least, that’s what director Clint Eastwood would have you believe in his skillful, emotional biopic J. Edgar.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as the misunderstood title character, aging 50 years in the process with the help of some seriously heavy-duty makeup. The story moves as a series of flashbacks, switching between an aging Hoover dictating his memoirs in the 1970s and a young Hoover rising to power as the groundbreaking director of the new Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the 1930s.

But make no mistake — this is not the story of J. Edgar Hoover, Crime Fighter. Rather, it is the relationship between Hoover and his longtime associate Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer, best known as the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network) that serves as the emotional and narrative core of the film.

Continue reading →

Originally published in The California Aggie

In the grand scheme of cinematic vampires, Barnabas Collins is, honestly, kind of a square.

He’s too gentlemanly to be scary, like Nosferatu or Dracula. His wardrobe is perpetually 200 years out of date, meaning he could never secretly live amongst the locals à la Edward Cullen. And with his stiff posture and raccoon eyes, his sex appeal is no match for Tom Cruise’s Lestat de Lioncourt (although no less than four women succumb to Barnabas’ advances throughout the course of the movie, so clearly I know nothing about vampire hotness).

Continue reading →