The World-Shaker’s Manifesto: Cool Hand Luke
World-shakers like Luke can never explain why they do what they do, why they continue to act even in the face of severe retribution. At best, if really pushed, their[…]
Category: Drama
Nobody in Babylon: The Hour of the Star (1985) and the Violence of Being Ordinary
The brutality is not simply that a hopeful woman dies before her dreams come true. Amaral brings narrative significance and annihilation almost into contact. For a few moments the world[…]
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Drama · Dreams · Mystery · Sex & Relationships
Personal and Profound: On Kubrick’s Late Masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut was, without doubt, Kubrick’s most personal picture; it was also, in the director’s estimate, his greatest. It is hard to argue with that assessment, although four or[…]
Class System · Comedy · Drama · French Cinema
The Call to Class: On Renoir’s Rules of the Game
The Rules of the Game, from 1939, is rare entertainment. It is both charming and earnest, light-footed and reflective. Life is always yielding to ideas of life, and vice versa.[…]
Comedy · Directors · Drama · Franchises & Series · LGBT & Queer · Teen films · Youth
The Jock, the Nerd, the Dork, and the Popular Kid: Shura’s “What’s It Gonna Be,” John Hughes, and Queer Nostalgia
To the extent that Shura has “queered” Hughes’s films in the act of paying homage to them, we might wonder how this process is informed by contemporary readings of Hughes,[…]
Make It Grief: Hamnet, Train Dreams, and the Prestige of Loss
Placed side by side, these films illuminate two competing models of prestige naturalism. One builds solemnity through cultural capital, symbol-heavy nature, and affective devices that arrive pre-loaded with meaning. In[…]
Body Horror · Christianity · Drama · Religion & Spirituality · Theory
Inscribed on the Flesh: Belief, Horror and the Body in Saint Maud and The Exorcist
In Saint Maud, belief is internalised: the body becomes the site of self-monitoring, discipline, and ecstatic surrender, so that authority no longer needs to come from outside because it has[…]
The Beauty of Failure: Pepê Lima and the History of Marginal Bodies in Michiko to Hatchin (2008–2009)
“Pepê has presence without a corridor.” * * * When I returned to Michiko to Hatchin for a second viewing, I was preparing a research piece on the series as[…]
Drama · Gore · Horror · Indies
Pleasant Valley as Funhouse Mirror: Regional Othering, Racial Displacement, and the Politics of the Hillbilly Icon in Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Two Thousand Maniacs!
By erasing Black presence entirely, displacing the historical reality of racial violence onto white-on-white revenge, and reviving the hillbilly icon in its most unabashedly vicious form, Lewis’s film enables audiences[…]
Masters of the Universe: Reflections on Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Mary (2026)
The world is human and non-human, anthropocentric and non-anthropomorphic, sometimes even misanthropic. Arguably, one of the greatest challenges that philosophy faces today lies in comprehending the world in which we[…]
Drama · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Nazism · Splatter & Gore · War
Anyone Miss Movies That Made People Vomit? Schindler’s Watch List
Forgotten and derided Nazisploitation movies expose the lost power of trash cinema and put today’s neutered McMovies to shame. * * * Of all the overused movie clichés, the inescapable[…]
Conspiracies · Drama · SF & Fantasy
The Light He Could Not Keep: On Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day
Knowledge is no longer public – it is in the hands of private companies, access conditional, sharing selective. And like everything that is privatized, what belongs to everyone does not[…]
Costume Drama · Drama · Essays · Mystery · Psychology · Thrillers & Action
Weirdness All the Way Down: Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut
Like the subtle differences of someone else’s cleaning efforts, our past is inescapable. A seemingly small choice can have myriad consequences, and this is what Kubrick is on about in[…]
Drama · Essays · SF & Fantasy
A Film for No One (Except Me): On The Adam Project
Perhaps this is a fantasy. Perhaps this is the father as imagined, not as experienced. Perhaps this is what the students receive, and what the son never did. And so,[…]
Comedy · Drama · Family · French Cinema
Family Matters: Shared Space in the Films of Cédric Klapisch
As a film within the evolving Klapisch oeuvre, what La Venue de l’Avenir (2025) looks forward toward remains, of course, to be seen. As a capstone at this point in[…]
Class System · Crime · Drama · French Cinema
Exchange and Virulent Sacrality in Robert Bresson’s L’Argent
What remains is a fierce critique leveled against money: the “father-master,” the heart of every exchange in free-market society, and the origin of the degradation of being first into having[…]
Drama · Politics · Thrillers & Action · War
Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite (2025): The System Works. Where Is the Human?
The war didn’t end. It was put on hold. The system never slept – men like Gonzalez kept watch, women like Walker stared at screens, bureaucrats like that man filled[…]
Capitalism · Class System · Comedy · Drama
The Deconstruction of Middle-Class Identity in Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Released at a time when conservative hegemony was coming to an end, Planes, Trains and Automobiles can be contextualised as an example of a cinematic expression of an ideological conjuncture,[…]
Counterculture · Crime · Cult Cinema · Directors · Drama · Satire
The Kubrick Production: How Stanley Kubrick Stage-Managed Reality
Every aspect of his professional life was stage-managed with the same precision he brought to a tracking shot. The results were remarkable. Total artistic control achieved at a young age.[…]
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