Animation · Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
Blockbuster films don’t have to be watered-down hero fare to succeed at the box office. The compelling design and archetypal simplicity of our comic-book heroes are gold mines for stories[…]
Drama · Mystery · Philosophy · Thrillers & Action
This is the central thesis Assayas raises here – instant gratification via the image suggests a greater degree of control over what we consume (including its ethics) when in fact[…]
Celebrity Culture · Crime · Digital · Drama · Societal Trends
The Bling Ring’s impossible challenge for us is to reject the moralizing. We feel superior to the teenagers because of the celebrity issue. The four girls and boy represent our[…]
Absurdism · African American · Horror · Surrealism · Westerns
The theme of exploitation is evident in Nope’s multiple references to a classic film. Not Jaws, The Goonies, or Close Encounters, or any of the Western films nodded at in[…]
The city of Visconti’s film is a palimpsest in which postwar modernity (nightclubs, movie theatres, beatniks, and loose women) is superimposed on the ruins of the city’s gothic past. Rather[…]
Franchises & Series · Horror · Men & Masculinity
We see how Jigsaw can fail, again and again, to help anyone and still blame it on them. We see how people can live through how little his traps teach[…]
Comedy · Historical & Epic · Native Americans · Revisionism · Westerns
Buffalo Bill and the Indians joins a select group of films whose popular failure nonetheless represented an aesthetic success: Patty Hearst (1987) and The King of Comedy (1983), come to[…]
Directors · Drama · Essays · Writers & Critics
Where Reid spends pages and pages absentmindedly ruminating on the many very painful, and very human, distinctions between Self and Other before losing himself in a tonal mess of relationship[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Impresarios & Moguls
Mom and Dad is likely the most successful exploitation movie ever, and it still offers a lesson in the facts of, well, not life but canny American entrepreneurialism, that is,[…]
Plot lines about women wanting babies are as old as time, and can easily degenerate into sexist tropes. Daisy’s desire to have a kid doesn’t define her. Instead, over the[…]
Drama · Religion & Spirituality · Writers & Critics
Graham Greene could be a very political writer (nowhere more than in The Quiet American, which was his next major work after The End of the Affair), but Christianity has[…]
Celebrity Culture · Counterculture · Music & Musicals · Production History · Societal Trends · Youth
A rewatch benumbed to this flash and flare reveals the stark morbidity of Head. Throughout the movie the Monkees are assaulted, hunted, and caged. Words fail, fists fail. The film[…]
Directors · Gender · Hollywood · Horror · Men & Masculinity
If the sum of Spielberg’s work is about how men live in the world, Jaws is his most particular point on the subject, a film centered with almost fantastical totality[…]
Lester D. Friedman. Citizen Spielberg. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2022. $24.95. Calling him “our foremost practitioner of reel American history,” Friedman draws our attention to Spielberg’s determination[…]
Franchises & Series · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy · Societal Trends
The Batman (2022) fulfills complex, necessary roles in society. The intricate power relations of the film, as a part of mass media, are directly related to those in the spectacle[…]
#MeToo · Animation · Animators · News · Production History · Societal Trends
Docter and Lasseter were part of the Pixar Braintrust, a group of aging white men that held creative control of Pixar’s productions. The original members – Lasseter, Docter, Andrew Stanton[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Muslims
Stranger at the Gate is sharp, and benefits from a tense and credible narrative. It’s constructed like a bomb – a heavy orb with a lit fuse, carefully and reassuringly[…]
Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Horror
I’ve detailed each film to convey the strange and strict extent to which they each cohere to one base fear: reproductive control. The only hope for human survival in Phase[…]
Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
“Look at the stars,” the genius of Trumbull’s movie finally seems to be saying, but also know the stars within. * * * Often, it’s the throwaway scenes that click.[…]
Activist & Political · Comedy · Counterculture · Experimental & Underground
This is an excerpt from the introduction to the author’s new book on Mr. Freedom (https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781800856943/). * * * The film calls into question both the American international and domestic[…]
