Horror · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
The Thing about The Thing and Some Other Things
It’s your thing, do what you wanna do, I can’t tell you who to sock it to. – Isley Brothers What in the thing is thingly? What is the thing[…]
Category: Philosophy
Activist & Political · Essays · Philosophy
Once Upon a Time – Shots in the Hyperreal (on Tarantino’s New Film)
“Hey, you’re Rick fucking Dalton. Don’t you forget it.” – Once Upon a Time – in Hollywood “And so art is everywhere, since artifice is at the very heart of reality.”[…]
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Drama · New Media · Philosophy
Videograms of a Revolution: Surveillance, Self-Regulation, and Techno-Progressivism in M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass (2019)
[This review contains spoilers for the films Glass and The Village.] “There are unknown forces that don’t want us to realise what we are truly capable of. They don’t[…]
Absurdism · Activist & Political · Philosophy
Disappearing Act: Traumatic Formalism in Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot (2017)
The film’s most problematic allegorical turn, however, is its subsequent and wholesale appropriation of Palestinian trauma. Despite the slaughter of four innocent Palestinians – by accident or not – Maoz[…]
“Family Swallows Everything”: Artificiality and Determinism in Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018)
Something hereditary is passed down to posterity, all without their foreknowledge or approval; an unborn child has no say in what color eyes it will have, what its allergies may[…]
Documentaries · Philosophy · TV & Streaming
A Not So Beautiful Day: Morgan Neville’s Documentary on Fred Rogers
The film’s childhood-centric poignancy is underscored by the depravity of today’s kindergarteners having to be concerned more with the logistics of hardened desks or evacuation drills thanks in part to[…]
Directors · Essays · Philosophy
Asking the Wrong Questions: Reiteration and Doubling in David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Mullholland Drive, and Inland Empire
“Mystery is good, confusion is bad. And there’s a big difference between the two.” – David Lynch * * * A survey of the critical literature pertaining to David Lynch’s[…]
Vibrant Matter in Blade Runner 2049
Blade Runner 2049 resists our contemporary moment of political and cultural polarization that exploits difference as a cudgel to reinforce (inevitably racialized) hostilities. The film instead forwards a vision of[…]
Documentaries · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality
So, “What Is Reality?” The E8 Lattice Theory and the Angel of History
“All time exists all the time” – from the documentary What Is Reality? * * * Emancipate yourself from the tunnel-visioned timekeeper! Return the unbending arrow of time to its[…]
Crime · Franchises & Series · Philosophy · TV & Streaming
Ten Years Since the Cable Went Out: Disassembling The Sopranos’ Finale, “Made in America”
As Jonah Weiner puts it, the final scene “does stage a violent death, patently and unambiguously: ours.” If the cut-to-black is punitive, it’s also Chase’s memento mori: remember that you[…]
Drama · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
I am Blade Runner 2049, Blade Runner 2049 is I
“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the window pane. I was the smudge of ashen fluff – and I Lived on, flew on,[…]
Horror · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality
Bella Donna: Lilith, Gaia, and the Spectral Mother in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday
We will go back to our old gods again. – Goethe * * * My eyes. My eyes. I’m seeing again. Across a gulf of how-many years, the light is[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality · Romance
Cosmic Melodrama: Darren Aronofsky’s mother!
Whatever else it is, mother! is ultimately a woman’s anxious nightmare about what it feels like to put your heart and soul into creating something only for people to take[…]
Horror · Philosophy · Romance
Lonely, but Not Alone: Death as a Collective Experience in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story
Regardless of whether it is worth doing or not, people will continue to rely on memory as a way to create legacy and heritage. People will always leave things behind,[…]
God Is Dead but the Shadow Is Long: Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant
Like Prometheus, Alien: Covenant refuses to allow either the religious or materialist viewer to remain comfortable in their own belief or unbelief: for every Christian and Darwinian horror there is seared[…]
Essays · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
The Fall of Donnie Darko: Re-Viewing the Myth of a Generation
In honor of its 15th anniversary, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko plays throughout the U.S. this year starting March 30 at select theaters in a 4K restoration – in some cases in the[…]
The Enigma of Arrival: Time-Traveling from Lovecraft to La Jetée
In the same way that the heptapod language permits Louise to grasp the warp and weft of her world, the form of the heptapods taps into the once fringe and now venerable[…]
“You’ve Gotta Do Something”: Cosmic Mobility and the Future of Mankind in Rebel Without a Cause
“Through the infinite reaches of space, the problems of man seem trivial and naïve indeed, and man existing alone seems himself an episode of little consequence … The Earth will[…]
Under the Sign of 39: The Case of the Curious Coincidence from Hitchcock to Antonioni and Beyond
In movieland, there is also the kind of coincidence where someone indeed has planned it, someone acting from behind the scene, manipulating appearances. In this case, a coincidence is a[…]
Drama · Memoir · Philosophy
After Love: Alan J. Pakula’s The Sterile Cuckoo
FROM CABIN C AT OUDIN’S COURT COTTAGES I just awoke, and wondered where you were. It was the strangest feeling, like I really expected you to be there. Eventually my[…]
