As American Beauty deals with visualized and thematic pleasure by giving us “beauty” in both sexualized and desexualized forms, and Ripley makes us feel like a voyeur alongside its protagonist[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · War · Women in Film
In contrast to the patriarchal norms that dominate “American” family values, The Brutalist quietly insists on the indispensable role of women in guiding not just familial stability but broader legacies[…]
African American · Class System · Colonialism · Exile and Displacement · Historical & Epic · Horror · Race · Religion & Spirituality
From the erasure of Native knowledge to the internal hierarchies among the oppressed, from religion’s double edge to the seduction of assimilation, Coogler’s film maps the mechanisms of survival within[…]
Covid-19 · Disease and Epidemics · Men & Masculinity · Military and Paramilitary · Pandemic · SF & Fantasy
As a single-minded seismologist posted in Antarctica who predicts the disastrous DC quake, Yoshizumi embodies the willful blindness and debasement of humans in the Cold War era: like those who[…]
Comedy · Directors · Indies · Interviews · Thrillers & Action
I love it when someone just absolutely shoves the vision down your throat. * * * Vulcanizadora, Joel Potrykus’ fifth feature film, hit the festival circuit last spring with a[…]
Class System · Documentaries · Drama · Eco
At first glance, Ilha das Flores and Parasite, separated by thirty years, appear to have little in common. Despite their many surface-level differences, however, they bear striking similarities. Both are[…]
Psychology · Religion & Spirituality · SF & Fantasy
In the same way that reading Jung can provide insight into The Day the Earth Stood Still, it is also the case that watching the movie can illuminate aspects of[…]
You need the virus to build the antidote, and so it should come as no surprise that movies made in Los Angeles are among the most powerful remedies to the[…]
“Death is the mother of beauty.” – Wallace Stevens “I choose the ugly as well as the beautiful, knowing it will all be beautiful soon enough.” – Marvin Bell *[…]
Directors · Drama · Religion & Spirituality
“That’s the secret of creativity. You have to steal around. If you keep going back to that same 7-Eleven, they’re going to catch you. So you go over to the[…]
Instead of a shape-shifting alien that overtakes its human hosts, capitalism is represented in Romero’s film by the military and to a lesser extent, the zombies. Zombies have long been[…]
The death of the animal allows for an altering of the visual dynamic that is often inaccessible through traditional mechanisms of film, and, through harnessing and disrupting the tenuous balance[…]
We watch, and it feels like anything could happen at a session that doubled as once-in-a-zeitgeist party, with Beatles, a host of rock luminaries – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Donovan,[…]
Directors · Essays · Experimental & Underground · French Cinema
Carax suggests that the constant availability of images as immaterial streams – reduced to binary code and accessible through handheld devices – has diminished their impact. One of the film’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Westerns · Women in Film
An excerpt from Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away, to be released March 25 by University Press of Kentucky, exploring Miles’s impressive career and her relationships with the[…]
“I don’t know if I started drinking ‘cause my wife left me or my wife left me ‘cause I started drinking but fuck it anyway.” – Ben Sanderson, Leaving Las[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays
Cruise’s performance as Mackey offers a unique opportunity to make sense of a Tate, and to see what all really lies right under the surface of this ongoing phenomenon. *[…]
Aging · Class System · Drama · Hollywood
We are grateful that Bark and Lucy and what they represent are able to exist. That such people have gone before, even if it meant going before in a work[…]
Historical & Epic · Politics · Religion & Spirituality · Satire · Sex & Relationships
Russell’s principal avatar in this film is Louis XIII, the Carnival King and Lord of Misrule. Devoted to ersatz relics and to his “tacky stage farce,” he quietly uncovers not[…]
AI · Asian · Philosophy · Revolution · SF & Fantasy
ABSTRACT Marx’s idea of species being is the recognition by humans that their work is carried out for the sake of other humans (rather than for any god or ruler).[…]
