Thomas Puhr lives in Chicago, where he teaches English and language arts. A regular contributor to Bright Lights Film Journal, he has also written for Film International, Beneficial Shock!, and The Big Picture Magazine, for which he is the current editor. 
David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation, edited by Matthew Sorrento and David Ryan. 259 pp. Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2022. 2007 was a good year for American film, with[…]
Horror · Mystery · SF & Fantasy · Westerns
The Thing and The Hateful Eight’s analogous narratives speak to broader philosophical notions of selfhood and knowledge of others. Their thematic undercurrents explore the forever-complicated terrain of what it means[…]
Something hereditary is passed down to posterity, all without their foreknowledge or approval; an unborn child has no say in what color eyes it will have, what its allergies may[…]
“Ava was a rat in a maze, and I gave her one way out. To escape, she’d have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did.” * *[…]
The film makes a far more subtle statement about childhood’s inevitable, metaphorical death: All innocent children must eventually grow into corrupted adults, and adults will only suffer for trying to[…]
The dominant image from Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) is that of an opaque pool of black liquid, into which sink a variety of men who have fallen victim[…]
