film
Partway through Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves (2023), the two protagonists visit a cinema to see Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die (2019). The comparison between Kaurismäki and Jarmusch is an easy one but nonetheless bolstered by this offbeat citation: two lovers, bound yet adrift like fallen leaves,
personal essay
Today is February 2nd, Groundhog Day, namesake holiday of the classic film in which Bill Murray relives a single day repeatedly until he learns to be a halfway decent person. 2016 through 2020 felt a bit like Groundhog Day for myself, and I imagine many others, as days of batshit
trans
Consider yourself lucky if you did not subject yourself to Lady Ballers, the recent Daily Wire film that, like seemingly all conservatives these days, has an axe to grind against transgender athletes. I watched it so you don’t have to, as the saying goes. I’ve written before about
horror
There's a great deal of twinning present in 2005's House of Wax. The film presents us with two sets of twins: Bo and Vincent, the film's antagonists, and Carly and Nick, the two protagonists. Nick sets up a classic twin dichotomy by quipping that
trans
I never wanted to watch the Matt Walsh-led documentary What is a Woman?, because, well, Matt Walsh is a hatemonger and a stochastic terrorist against transgender people. The Daily Wire host walks viewers through the insidiously sophisticated What is a Woman? not in the effort of gaining any understanding
film
If you follow the logic of They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, the documentary on Orson Welles and the attempt to make his final film, then the Netflix release of The Other Side of the Wind is a vindication for the embattled auteur. And it may
film
It’s impossible to discuss 2023 in cinema without talking about BARBENHEIMER, the fan-made mashup event of the summer season. With Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer set to release the same day, fans seized on the productive friction between the sparkly pink Barbie and the
trans
"But then the movies are an extension of life and should be treated as such, or so goes the thoughts of many writers who have and are dealing with the subject. In censoring movies, it is felt that there is little difference than if the censoring was being levied
Newsletter
There's a saying that "there are no atheists in foxholes", which I suppose is one potential takeaway from the 2014 film God's Not Dead. The film purports to take the form of a debate between a young Christian college student and an atheist professor
Newsletter
Newsletter
One of my undertakings this previous Halloween season was to watch every single Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" episode, all 30+ of them. Let's see how I did. Subscribe now Treehouse of Horror Feel free to skip ahead to "The Raven". It's a
horror
Of all the ways to die, "death by Facebook" seems among the worst, although truthfully the most horrific aspect of 2014's Unfriended is the prospect that, even after death, one would have to continue using social media. The project of classical Cronenbergian body horror has long