Aftersun: The Skin of Filmic Memory
We all wait for everything to come into focus, and if we are lucky, we might eventually get access to one snapshot that tells an incomplete story. So naturally, while[…]
Author: Vlad Dima
Vlad Dima is Professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University. He has published numerous articles, mainly on French and francophone cinemas, but also on francophone literature, comics, American cinema, and television. He is the author of Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films (Indiana University Press, 2017), The Beautiful Skin: Football, Fantasy, and Cinematic Bodies in Africa (Michigan State University Press, 2020), and Meaninglessness: Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in in Postcolonial Cinema (Michigan State University Press, 2022).
Drama · Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
A Song of Ire: Game of Thrones, A Year Later
It is a fascinating exercise to consume this show according to the twenty-first-century rules of binge-watching. As the hours pass and the on-screen death count rises, the sustained passivity of[…]
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Franchises & Series · Superheroes
Lesser Expectations: Joker and Classical Hollywood Cinema
Phoenix’s body is mostly skin and bones, which is ironic since the film attempts to flesh out the Joker. In fact, this Joker’s ribs and shoulder blades seem to be[…]
Franchises & Series · Thrillers & Action
Holding On: Mission: Impossible and the Myth of the Perfect Man
Fallout is basically about Ethan holding on, not just to elevators, helicopters, or sliding rocks, but to immortality and the ridiculous notion of the perfect man. He is fast, strong,[…]
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly Wolverine: Logan (2017)
This film is indeed all about catharsis, ours certainly but mostly Logan’s: liberating violence alongside liberal use of profanity, both underpinned by what we know to have been eighteen long[…]
African · Experimental & Underground
Waiting for Cinema: Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Naked Reality (2016)
Bekolo’s cinema is not just “African,” or postcolonial, or experimental, or narrative. It is also a cinema that constantly searches for itself, for what it is and what it can accomplish.[…]
SF & Fantasy · Thrillers & Action
He’s Back: The Paratextual Life of Terminator: Genisys
The movie makes a half-hearted attempt at chastising contemporary society and its dependence on technology, on machines (ironically, Sarah would not have survived without the help of a machine). Everyone[…]
Comedy · Crime · Sound & Language
Sound, Music, and the Verbal MacGuffin in American Hustle (2013)
American Hustle is, foremost, a film about appearances, about what is real and the constant dialogue between the diegetic and the extra-diegetic, which is especially compelling at the level of[…]
Buried Alive in Space: The Non-Story of Gravity
“As the camera constantly spins with the characters, as one might get motion sickness, we may realize that the film really is about nothing. And it does not matter.”
Essays · Horror · SF & Fantasy
The Lore of the Running Undead (How World War Z Was Lost and Won)
“The choppy narrative arc of the film ends up matching the new hybrid of fast-running, fast-changing zombie: like its undead, the film moves too fast. The bitten person turns in twelve seconds in World War Z, which feels like about the same amount of time given to a story line before turning to another.”
Perpetual Motion: The Dardenne Brothers’ The Kid with a Bike
“As Cyril’s frenetic movement appears to up the tempo of the film, the directors drastically slow down the pace by using long takes, and as little cutting as possible. It is amid the two contrasting tendencies that Cyril’s story finds the perfect narrative balance.”
(Not) Love and Death: On Michael Haneke’s Amour
“The film beautifully captures the slow decomposing of its characters by following a parallel process at the level of cinematic composition.”
“I Am Not Insane. My Mother Had Me Tested”: The Mothers of the Big Bang
More like the Big Wang Theory
Cinema Is Magic (also, Clocks and Trains): On Martin Scorsese’s Hugo
“‘If you ever wonder where your dreams come from, look around: this is where they’re made.’ Maybe the value of Scorsese’s film lies exactly in this sentence and the context in which it is delivered.”
Multiple Senses: Tom Ford’s A Single Man
“Ford creates a unique cinematic experience in which the visual, the aural, and even the olfactory mix to produce a powerful synesthetic experience.”
Reviews · Thrillers & Action · War
Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: Film Kills
“Tarantino thus concedes some of his omnipotence to the medium he so deftly manipulates.”
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