The Good, the Bad, the Ugly Wolverine: Logan (2017)
This film is indeed all about catharsis, ours certainly but mostly Logan’s: liberating violence alongside liberal use of profanity, both underpinned by what we know to have been eighteen long[…]
Category: SF & Fantasy
Superman v Objectivism: Forget Lex Luthor and Brainiac; Could Ayn Rand Be Superman’s Biggest Enemy?
Much of the reason for the continued popularity of Christopher Reeve’s portrayal was the commitment he gave to the character irrespective of whether he was saving Lois from falling to[…]
Counterculture · Essays · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
The Machine and Beyond: Male Hysteria in The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Others
“I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment – that of looking down within the tarn – had been to deepen the first singular impression. There[…]
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[…]
Directors · Film Technology & History · SF & Fantasy
George Lucas’s Wildest Vision: Retrofuturist Auteurism in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
The very foundation of Lucas’s cinematic philosophy is newness – this comes through in his obsession with technological possibilities, and through his genuinely childlike pursuit of spectacle and wonder. His[…]
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: George Lucas’s Greatest Artistic Statement?
Never one to divide “high” art from “low,” Lucas draws from every available well of visual representation to craft this uniquely digital genre entertainment, a film that is broadly drawn[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
Blood Will Tell: The Purge: Election Year (2016)
To be a popular film, which is the intent of the Purge series, is to play into what an audience loves; and in the case of something it is not[…]
Directors · Interviews · SF & Fantasy
Futureworlds: Talking with Yorgos Lanthimos about The Lobster (2015)
The Lobster tries to look at how we are as people – what it means to be single, alone, or involved with someone and all of the constraints that society[…]
“When Does a Difference-Engine Become a Search for Truth?” Cybernetic Platonism in Alex Proyas’ I, Robot (2004)
Sonny says that now that he has completed the mission for which he was created – to kill Dr. Lanning – he does not know what to do with himself,[…]
Jurassic Parks: Stevie and the Dinosaurs
Spielberg, like many film directors, appears to be far more interested in film than life – interested in film, and interested in audiences, and how to move them through film.[…]
Essays · Experimental & Underground · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
Time and the Image: The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
These things never happen but are always. – Sallust The dead love the most, love the longest. – Malvina von Stille * * * INTRODUCTORY Centuries of thought and imagination,[…]
Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy
Star Wars: The Force Awakens: An Archetypal Review
Critics and fans love the film, but complain that it is less “mythic” than its predecessors. The myth is still there; it is just harder to see because it is[…]
Synthetic Mythology: George Lucas, Disney, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The marriage of Disney and Lucasfilm is a match made in heaven. Disney – the man and the company – spent the better part of a century trying to homogenize[…]
A Good Game of Chess: Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015)
“Ava was a rat in a maze, and I gave her one way out. To escape, she’d have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did.” * *[…]
SF & Fantasy · Thrillers & Action
He’s Back: The Paratextual Life of Terminator: Genisys
The movie makes a half-hearted attempt at chastising contemporary society and its dependence on technology, on machines (ironically, Sarah would not have survived without the help of a machine). Everyone[…]
Into the Deep: Reflections on Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013)
The dominant image from Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) is that of an opaque pool of black liquid, into which sink a variety of men who have fallen victim[…]
Notes on a Stupid Dinosaur Movie: Jurassic World and the Hollywood Blockbuster
Once a film gives up on originality, it immediately descends into nihilism. Whatever sensory pleasures such a film may offer, the underlying assumption is that the entire experience is empty[…]
Slave Runner: Genetic Engineering, Slavery, and Immortality in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982)
In a dehumanised world it is therefore the replicants who are keener to live, love, and be free. This is another important issue that the film raises: who is actually[…]
Plissken on Parade: Escape from New York (1981) Comes to Blu-ray
So even if you aren’t nostalgic for the heady sense of danger and decadence, do yourself a favor and crash the pod down into Carpenter country – an alternate reality[…]
Essays · New Media · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
Spike Jonze vs. the Conspiring Escapist: On Her, Robert Coover’s Universal Baseball Association, and Jan Švankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure
“What Jonze, Coover, and Švankmajer are all playing with in their distinctive, varying shades of dark humor are the dual perspectives of the Spielbergian audience, absorbed in the protagonists’ fantasies,[…]
Links + BSA
