horror
Last week, the day came that we all knew was coming. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that overturned Roe v Wade, thereby eliminating the constitutional right to abortion in the country. This decision has far-reaching implications that go beyond the horror this inflicts on people who
Newsletter
In the interest of getting my brain up and running for the day, I present a list of some of the best fictional television commercials. Why? I don't know, exactly, but the idea popped into my mind as I was driving to the coffee shop where I'
Newsletter
It's the year 2020, and true to Larry Cohen's ahead-of-his-time genius, I have to clarify that I'm writing about his 1982 film Q - The Winged Serpent, not the conspiracy theory that's currently proliferating just about everywhere like some kind
trans
This is an essay about Alfred Hitchcock. But first: I want to talk about The Accused for a moment. The 1988 film stars Jodie Foster as a rape victim who takes legal measures against her rapists as well as the bystanders who egged them on. The film obscures the rape
film
It's not hard to imagine the pitch for a film like Red Notice, and why it succeeded. It has it all: The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, a treasure hunt, irreverent and self-aware humor, a duplicitous story with several twisty twists, a buried Nazi artifact vault, a
film
Don't Look Up is the new end-of-the-world dramedy from director Adam McKay, starring a plethora of talent too long to list here. It's funny, it's painful, it's infuriating, it's uplifting; in other words, it's everything
horror
If you've never seen a silent film with a live musical accompaniment, you really should. Even if you have nothing more than a passing curiosity about silent film, the experience is worthwhile. The film pops off the screen in a way that 3D has always promised but never
horror
I recently finished a co-op playthrough of The Quarry, a cinematic, choices-matter horror videogame in the vein of classics like Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. By drawing heavily from eighties camp slasher flicks and using VHS as a visual reference point, The Quarry fits perfectly into the throwback
Newsletter
[Reposted from Wordpress, originally posted November 2021. I’ve cleaned up some typos.] In Titanic, when Fabrizio says he can see the Statue of Liberty from the bow of the Titanic, this is obviously a flat-earth truther clue put into the film by director James Cameron. If anyone knows
horror
The teen film tends to open on a high school world that is already beyond any inciting incident: that is, the social order is already undesirable as the film begins (in this way, the genre that that teen movie most resembles may actually be the social problem film), and the
film noir
Fargo turns 25 next year, and the Coens' 1996 opus not only retains all of the power that I can only imagine it held upon release (I would have been 7 at the time), it actually ages better every time I watch it. More than any other film, Fargo
film
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a very smart movie masquerading as a very dumb one. The film is a testament to the pull of Nicolas Cage's cult hero persona, warping the very film itself from a thoughtful, self-aware indie dramedy into the kind of absurd