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
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[…]
“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
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[…]
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.[…]
Activist & Political · Counterculture · Crime · Drama · Urban Conflict · Writers & Critics
For a popular entertainment, One Battle is ultimately hopeful but not pandering. Viewers do not leave the theater with the spoon-fed feel-good reassurances offered by a Rocky or a Star[…]
Drama · Essays · Surrealism
Lynch takes the glamorized version of youth (even some of the glamor from his very own ’90s series) often presented on-screen and renders it unrecognizable. Dramatized teenhood usually tries to[…]
Colonialism · Drama · Imperialism · Melodrama
Typically recognized for its portrayal of middle-class repression and female depression, the film is also an early eulogy to British empire. The doomed flirtation signals an end to Britain’s love[…]
Drama · Essays · Men & Masculinity · Nature
The myth of the Great White bears numerous meanings, of variable relevance, from the perspective of then and now. Either way, the old Ahab type is unable to triumph, but[…]
Class System · Drama · Hollywood · Melodrama
Before we were townies, we were snobs. * * * Before Hollywood regarded “Bostonian” as a synonym for “townie” – see Mystic River (2003), The Departed (2006), Gone Baby Gone[…]
Colonialism · Drama · Exile and Displacement
Spoiler Warning: This piece discusses all major events in the film. * * * Óliver Laxe’s Sirāt fuses the fear of losing oneself with the trembling topography of the desert;[…]
