“No Viking Atheists”: The Northman’s Journey into Old World Belief
In my theater’s showing, the instant that Fjölnir lost his head in the climactic volcano battle, an elderly woman left her seat, lingering at the door a moment before exiting.[…]
Category: Genres
Experimental & Underground · Horror · New Media · Societal Trends · Theory · Thrillers & Action · TV & Streaming
A Spectre in the Participatory Panopticon: The Database Horror of Unfriended: Dark Web
The encounter between the lead characters and The Circle evokes a wider sense of anxiety regarding the extent to which we upload information about every area of our lives into[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals
Under Bloodless Skies: U2 Live at Red Rocks after 40
Their performance isn’t marked by precision or technical mastery. It’s an onrush of unbridled enthusiasm all the way through – a frenzied, joyous romp that treats the show as if[…]
Costume Drama · Designers · Drama · Fashion · Melodrama · Photo Essays · Romance
What Unwed Mothers Wore in 1946: Ulmer’s Her Sister’s Secret and Leisen’s To Each His Own
In difficult times, fashion is always outrageous. – Elsa Schiaparelli * * * Edgar G. Ulmer’s Her Sister’s Secret was released to theaters the same year as Mitchell Leisen’s To[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · French Cinema · Mystery · Psychology
Fathoming the Phantom: On Bunuel’s The Phantom of Liberty
The question becomes: is it worth trying to be free? Is the struggle fruitless? Why can’t we escape our servitude to the past, to society, to others? * * *[…]
Eco · Horror · SF & Fantasy
My New Life as Human Fertilizer: Jaco Bouwer’s Gaia (2021)
In his creation of a nonhuman cinematic world that mines horror from its confrontation of human fear of irrelevance and inadaptability, Bouwer ultimately suggests that survival in the era following[…]
Book Review: David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation
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[…]
The Shadow of Ernest Hemingway: On Crazy Weather, Orson Welles’s Unpublished 1973 Bullfighting Screenplay
The unfinished projects to which Welles devoted his energies began in July 1961. This was exactly twenty-five years after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the year in which[…]
Actors & Personalities · Dance · Dancers · Hollywood · Music & Musicals
Fred Astaire: Footsteps on the Sands of Time
He is transfixing just walking across the screen in his first movie, Dancing Lady (1933), where he partners Joan Crawford and looks as if he could fly if he wanted[…]
Family · Horror · Women in Film
Home Wee Home – It’s Where the Horror Is: Miniature Models, Crime Scenes, and Toxic Femininity in Hereditary and Sharp Objects
A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook, It can talk, talk, talk. – Sylvia Plath, “The Applicant” (Oct. 11, 1962) And they stuck me together[…]
Historical & Epic · Medieval · Women in Film
Medieval Arthuriana Was Always Scary, but Not in the Way You’d Think: On Sir Gawain and The Green Knight
The adaptation is successful not just in its understanding of how irreverent and illogical the narrative space of medieval romance is and always has been, but also in how it[…]
Crime · Gothic · Horror · Melodrama · Photo Essays
To Cut or Not to Cut? The POV Shots in Eyes Without a Face (and how they differ from those in Psycho)
Franju demonstrates how beauty hides pain, until pain becomes beautiful. * * * Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face is a reliably haunting film, a beautiful nightmare[…]
Animation · Asian · Communism and Socialism
Monster in the Machine: Monstrosity and Marxism in Spirited Away
The gold that No-Face dispenses to the workers later crumbles into a pile of dirt. Conjured from nothing, No-Face’s fabricated currency undermines the very system of profit that capitalism is[…]
Drama · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
Novel into Film: Adapting Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter
We come to find out as viewers, whether we believe in Leda’s self-governing comportment at the beginning or not, that this task of motherhood is never-ending; each work demonstrates to[…]
Experimental & Underground · Religion & Spirituality · Women in Film
A White Darkness: Maya Deren in Haiti
The volition of these dancers is as clear as the sense that it is not their own. Deren mirrors this depersonalization masterfully; her camera splits a man between his reflections,[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Directors
Caricature and Empathy in the Work of the Coen Brothers
Ethan and Joel Coen have shared writing, directing, and producing credits on their collaborations until their recent hiatus from working together. Here they are on location for their 2004 comedy[…]
African American · Drama · Dreams · Horror · Urban Conflict
Candymen: Slumming, Scarifying, and Gentrifying in 1992 and 2022
Good mornin’, Mr. Benson, I see you’re doin’ well. If I had me a shotgun I’d blow you straight to hell. – Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia, “Candyman,” 1970 * * *[…]
Books · French Cinema · Thrillers & Action
Book Review: Gemma King, Jacques Audiard
Gemma King, Jacques Audiard. Manchester University Press, 2021. * * * In the first book-length exploration of the controversial director’s filmography, part of Manchester University Press’s French Film Directors series,[…]
Experimental & Underground · Mystery · New Media
Memoria: An Existential Wake-Up Call from Film’s Possible Future
Apichatpong’s film is the bang in the night that has the power to shock us out of convention, to help us open our eyes and ears to the rich and[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Education
“To Know Is Not Enough”: On Amy Goldstein’s Documentary The Unmaking of a College
The Unmaking of a College is a stealthy Hampshire College recruitment/endowment film, but it’s easier to breathe through the subtle sales pitch because the story is true and the message[…]
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