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Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
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[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words makes clear that her life was messy and episodic, but she earned great love from her directors, co-stars, and family. Don’t wait for Mommie[…]
Comedy · Comics · Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
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[…]
Drama · Memoir · Religion & Spirituality · Women in Film
Both protagonists undertake a kind of “work of the self,” whereby they simultaneously come to terms with trauma – in one case, paternal betrayal, in the other, maternal abandonment by[…]
Comics · Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy · Women in Film
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
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[…]
Horror · LGBT & Queer · Writers & Critics
One of the few indelible images in director Robert Mulligan’s 1972 film of The Other is that of Niles in the freaks’ tent at the 4th of July fair, gazing[…]
Documentaries · Religion & Spirituality
Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent (2016) can be read as a brilliant subversion of the colonising role that the camera plays in appropriating native cultures in favour of Western[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · War
Naturally, Huston was furious about the film’s suppression and remained so all through the intervening years. In his words, “I think it boils down to the fact that they wanted[…]
Franchises & Series · Horror · SF & Fantasy
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
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[…]
The women in these feminist films have power, but they’re more complex than fatale. * * * In the ultra-buoyant realms of badass, the femme fatale is equal to any[…]
Peckinpah’s ethics and form are evinced best in his sixth film, Straw Dogs, where we also discover the key to his aesthetic of violence. David Sumner takes a sabbatical to Yorkshire,[…]
The two films under examination here, The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Night of the Living Dead (1968), would have you believe that nothing harrows the soul like an[…]
Like Prometheus, Alien: Covenant refuses to allow either the religious or materialist viewer to remain comfortable in their own belief or unbelief: for every Christian and Darwinian horror there is seared[…]
In the following examples of straight bodyguard/gay apprentice works, we see a progression in the level of violence from the bodyguard and apprentice alike as suppressed homoerotic yearnings overtake traditional[…]
Trainspotting has been criticized as “pro-drug” for its flighty and pictorial depictions of heroin use, but I don’t think that’s even an issue. The grimy mundanity of the world surrounding[…]
Hitchcock’s one-word titles have never been so instructive. Psycho is the feeling of being preyed on by your self, as by one of Norman’s stuffed birds. It is the primal[…]
Biopic · Drama · Essays · TV & Streaming
“In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in ‘blood and guts,’ and in living color, you are going to see another first – attempted suicide.” –[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Music & Musicals
Few movies have represented LA with such fawning reverence and nostalgia as La La Land. The filmmakers depict a clean, spare, elegant city, sluiced in mid-century Technicolor, consisting almost exclusively[…]
Directors · Interviews · Romance
On The Love Witch: “I like to make films with a kind of dream logic. My films are a mix of reality and fantasy, or a mix of what is[…]
Activist & Political · Biopic · Documentaries
Jeffrey Toobin, whose 2008 New Yorker article inspired this film, describes Roger Stone as “a malevolent Forrest Gump.” Stone is more than okay with that. He’s happy for people to[…]
Keep the Change does something unusual, casting actors on the autism spectrum to play autistic roles. The strategy is already a success in its first outing – the film just[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
New York’s prestigious Tribeca Film Festival started April 19 and runs through April 30. Claire Baiz reports on a film screened in the fest’s “Spotlight Documentary” section on one of[…]
