Historical & Epic · Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy · War
The two fundamental concepts of Homer’s world – xenia, the generous hospitality owed to strangers as Zeus’s law; and nostos, the longing for home – converge with mētis in Nolan’s[…]
Drama · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Nazism · Splatter & Gore · War
Forgotten and derided Nazisploitation movies expose the lost power of trash cinema and put today’s neutered McMovies to shame. * * * Of all the overused movie clichés, the inescapable[…]
Comedy · Military and Paramilitary · Nazism · Satire · War
Chaplin is not merely parodying how a dictator sounds. He is anatomizing how fascism recruits, extracts, degrades, appropriates, scapegoats, and lies. * * * Charlie Chaplin’s opening Hynkel speech in[…]
Drama · Politics · Thrillers & Action · War
The war didn’t end. It was put on hold. The system never slept – men like Gonzalez kept watch, women like Walker stared at screens, bureaucrats like that man filled[…]
Animation · Drama · Myth and Archetype · War
We are, each of us, mearcstapas, navigating the borders between lands. Home, in Vinland Saga, extends beyond geopolitics and ancestry. Whenever geographical territories are breached, cultural and personal identities are[…]
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[…]
Drama · Eco · Games & Gaming · Literature and Film · SF & Fantasy · War
The everyday hero is a foreign concept in a universe where obscure machinations corrode a society that blindly follows in the hopes of stability and lasting glory. * * *[…]
Books · Crime · Directors · Drama · Franchises & Series · War
Coppola not only lived for his films but also lived in and through them, in a constant process of inventing and reinventing himself both as an artist and as a[…]
Documentaries · Native Americans · War
Thankfully, Lusztig resists the temptation to make old film segments salacious. There are no blooming mushroom clouds, no charred devastation. Richand is a movie about a small town with a[…]
Biopic · Directors · Experimental & Underground · War · Writers & Critics
I’m not interested in what happened next; I’m interested in what happens emotionally next. It’s like memory. Memory isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. A tiny thing can be the thing that’s[…]
Comedy · Communism and Socialism · Directors · Drama · Eastern European · Russia · War · Writers & Critics
Billy Wilder turned to these two plays because they offered the situations, structure, and characters that would allow his imagination to flower and create contemporary stories – a patriotic military[…]
Franchises & Series · Military and Paramilitary · Thrillers & Action · War
Top Gun might leave viewers with the negative impression that all naval aviators are infantilized, high-functioning, pride-stricken narcissists, and I’m going to let you in on a secret. We are. But most[…]
Drama · War · Writers & Critics
The refugees’ babel is a constant background presence in Seghers’s novel, a kind of Greek chorus commenting on the various ship arrivals and departures, and spreading news of any developments[…]
Essays · Pandemic · SF & Fantasy · War
Excerpted from the author’s new critical study, Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980s: The Bunkered Decades (Oxford University Press, December 2021), with the kind permission of[…]
Activist & Political · Asian · TV & Streaming · War
This is the first piece of a multi-part, long-form series entitled “The Twilight Zone and the Culture Wars.” The series spotlights several episodes from Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and[…]
Directors · Drama · Outsiders · War · Writers & Critics
Rumanian refugee Georges Iscovescu (Charles Boyer) conning a guileless California schoolteacher, Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland, in an Oscar-nominated role), into marrying him so he can enter the United States[…]
Trauma can plant its seed-bomb in the minefield of a vulnerable mind, a risk every participant in war takes, and one the film addresses in several contexts. For the viewer,[…]
Drama · Military and Paramilitary · Philosophy · Thrillers & Action · Urban Conflict · War
This essay discusses Eye in the Sky’s elaborate staging of the trolley problem, a famous philsophical thought experiment designed to tease out our criteria for moral judgments. The author argues[…]
Activist & Political · Hollywood · Teaching · War · Women in Film
It is in the American women’s picture that, in my classroom at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, I’m able to lead students in a global reading of women’s[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Cinematographers · Interviews · War
When I take on a project, one of the first things I try to do is get an idea of the overarching tone the director is looking for. Then I[…]
