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: SF & Fantasy
Drama · Literature and Film · Russia · SF & Fantasy
Intimately Alien: Conflicting Ideologies in Solyaris (1968) and Solaris (1972)
While there can be no doubt Solyaris is no artistic masterpiece, the idea that it isn’t a product of its time is more complicated. To the extent that the film[…]
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I Won’t Hurt You: Edward Scissorhands’ Lessons in Compassion
Edward is never really accepted for who he is by those around him, the persecution he is subjected to the result of a communal, warped worldview and individual biases, ranging[…]
Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
“One Last Look at My Friends”: An Archetypal Review of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker
Now, there is no reason or way to lay blame for this clash of styles, since Abrams devotees can fairly claim that Johnson started the revisionary process, and the Johnsonians[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
Klaatu’s Police Action: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Remembered
Suddenly, Gort doesn’t seem so powerful. We’re told of his strength and given a few meager examples. We have to take Klaatu’s word for it. The universe/world policeman is a[…]
Essays · Mystery · SF & Fantasy
Talkin’ ’bout My Gentrification: The Secret Life of The Kirlian Witness (1979)
“The city was dirty. And dirt is fertile.” – Jeremiah Moss * * * New York City ca. 1976 was dying on the vine. With over a million citizens on[…]
Essays · Historical & Epic · Memoir · SF & Fantasy
The Wizard of Oz at 80: Archive of a Rust Belt Girl
The Wizard of Oz, the film, turns 80 this year, 2019. To celebrate, we present Amy Kenyon’s striking analysis/memoir, which explores growing up a “rust belt girl” in postwar Detroit[…]
Horror · Interviews · Movies · SF & Fantasy
Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on Introducing Kids to Scary Movies, Why He Likes Lords of Chaos, and the Deal with Women and Horror
* * * It’s The Day of the Triffids’ fault: when he was a wee lad stuck at home in front of the television with a sprained arm (fault: sister,[…]
Drama · Horror · SF & Fantasy
Facing “Ultraviolence”: Blindness as Insight in Bird Box
Given the fact that sex and violence are alleged to be as normalized in our culture as wind blowing through the trees, in Bird Box, Malorie’s shock even appears prudish[…]
“Downsizing” Liberal Hollywood: How the Film’s Christian Message Undermines Arguments for National Health Care
Downsizing is a dystopic satire on American values that has an unsurprising and credible core involving a sick and impoverished underclass. It is credible because the USA is alone among[…]
We Need to Talk: Language and Communication in The Martian and Arrival
Uncharacteristically, The Martian and Arrival do not present us with a problematic dystopian future with which to grapple; a future in which everything has always already gone wrong. Instead, they[…]
Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
Watch it Again! Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
We could call Episode I the first of the modern “digital epics.” It is perhaps the single most influential film on today’s Hollywood, the film that introduced the concept of[…]
Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy · Superheroes
There Goes the Friendly Neighborhood: Why Spider-Man Needs Adversity
So how does Disney repeatedly peddle the same action film while also making this story acceptable to the media as a progressive identity narrative for the little guy? How does[…]
Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
Watch it Again! Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
Jurassic Park, in all its dark consumeristic negatives and heartless colonial instincts, exists in the real world as a film in the same way that the park exists in the[…]
Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
Watch It Again! The Avengers (2012) and the Intertextuality Problem
A Transformers film has to face incessant criticism about the amount of action, the blurry continuity of its symphonies of shrapnel, the overuse of MacGuffins, and the lack of good[…]
Drama · SF & Fantasy · Women in Film
The End of Cinema: Female Agency and the Influence of Stalker in Annihilation
Even as it has sunk like a stone commercially, Annihilation has drawn a flurry of passionate responses, mainly, it seems, from women writers. Many single out its admixture of beauty[…]
Directors · Horror · SF & Fantasy
Weird and Pissed Off: Field Notes on John Carpenter’s First Fifteen Years
“It’s better to be a human being than an imitation.”- John Carpenter, on The Thing * * * 1. Begin with sound. Begin with Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). A[…]
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[…]
Drama · LGBT & Queer · SF & Fantasy
A Fine Romance? On Call Me by Your Name
As in romance novels, the excitement of sexual provocation is the heart of the story. It occupies two-thirds of the film: “His finger brushed mine” developed in fifteen stages. The[…]
Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
The Last Jedi: Enjoying Corporate Cinema’s Quasi-Risks While They Last
One might argue that Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi attempts at deconstruction yet again, depicting the original trilogy’s heroic Luke as an inexplicably jaded Jedi living in self-imposed exile on[…]
