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,[…]
Category: SF & Fantasy
Watch it Again! Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982)
The beautiful grime in Blade Runner challenges you to find humanity in the mechanism of our future, humanity which Scott omits. So we search the frigid replicants for their ghosts,[…]
Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
Silence is golden, so it would seem: On War for the Planet of the Apes (Matt Reeves)
Is it rude to point out that male chimps don’t hug their sons? That’s because they don’t know they have sons! They aren’t “faithful” to their “wives,” which they don’t[…]
Comedy · Comics · Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
Watch It Again! Batman: The Movie (1966)
The recent passing of Adam West – who made Batman his own despite the many higher-profile claimants to the cape – reminds us of the feature film based on the witty TV[…]
Comics · Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy · Women in Film
Fight Makes Right: Unearned Feminism in Wonder Woman
Unshackled by the Snyder malaise – and ignoring the slow motion he made a fad with 300, which Jenkins curiously revisits with consistency verging on the fetishistic – Gadot roars.[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy
The Legend of Tarzan: A Rich White Man’s Burden, or, Donald in the Jungle
Several questions suggest themselves. What ideological framework is revealed by the forwarding of a contemporary story in which the white man has lost his mojo and needs to struggle to[…]
Franchises & Series · Horror · SF & Fantasy
Alien: Covenant: Ridley Scott’s Myth of Creation Science
The people we care most about in Alien: Covenant are those we most delight in seeing eviscerated. David gives us his own flair for the ghoulish, cultivating with us his garden of monsters[…]
Animation · Comics · Music & Musicals · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
Hooked on a Feeling: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Adventure Time, and the Bonds of Imagination
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has infinitely more in common with the psychic quest for one’s identity, the yearning for belonging and friendship, and the no-rules imagination – sometimes[…]
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[…]
Another Layer Under the Skin (2013): Racial Empathy and Self-Knowledge
Our failures of understanding may express themselves as prejudicial disregard of others of a different color, race, religion, or gender. From this vantage, the film invites the viewer to reflect[…]
Experimental & Underground · Romance · SF & Fantasy
Watch it Again! La Belle et la Bête (France, Jean Cocteau, 1946)
Many have captured in equally luxurious fantasies the Beast that longs in men to be more than he is, and it is this Beast that Disney aims at literal children.[…]
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[…]
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,[…]
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