Reading Time: 7 minutes Some of the best science fiction illuminates our stark reality: We are here now, in this present moment, and we have a choice to live, and grow, and learn, and love. Or to give up on all that and destroy ourselves and each other. The scenario is not great, but the choice seems obvious.
film
Posted inFilm/TV
This year’s ‘greatest’ greatest films list shakes up the canon
Reading Time: 5 minutes Everyone has a greatest films list. Roger Ebert. AFI. If you have a Letterboxd account, you probably have one too. It is not irregular for me, in conversation, to casually suggest that a recent film I’ve seen might be one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen. But not all lists are created equal. Sight […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Texas mom: ‘Hocus Pocus 2’ will make you ‘fall victim to the schemes of hell’
Reading Time: 4 minutes Congratulations to KWTX in Texas for finding the most insane Christian mom in the community, convincing her it was a good idea to appear on camera so she could tell viewers that the biggest threat to their children was the movie Hocus Pocus 2, and then making sure the camera was fully zoomed in on […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Prominent atheists claim problem with ‘Jihad Rehab’ film is ‘identity politics’
Reading Time: 6 minutes Jihad Rehab, a new documentary focusing on Islamic extremism, is getting attention and criticism after its recent premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, but some of the most defensive reactions are coming from prominent atheists who refuse to dig into the nuance. The film (now called The UnRedacted) takes place inside a Saudi Arabian rehabilitation […]
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Review: ‘Pearl’ and ‘Blonde’: great horror, misleading marketing
Reading Time: 3 minutes If you stuck around through the end credits of Ti West’s retro slasher X this past spring, you were treated to a campy teaser advertising Pearl, a prequel promising the origin story of that film’s horny, homicidal antagonist gamely played by Mia Goth (who also plays X’s aspiring adult film star Maxine. X is a […]
Posted inSatire
‘Cat & Dog Best Friends (Watch Till the End!!!)’ earns 12-min ovation at Cannes
Reading Time: < 1 minute In a rousing moment at today’s Cannes Film Festival, the film Cat & Dog Best Friends (Watch Till the End!!!) earned a stunning 12 minutes of applause. Crowds at the prestigious film festival mete out their praise of a film in the length of applause. Pan’s Labyrinth earned a raucous 22 minutes of applause in […]
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Review: Věra Chytilová’s ‘Daisies’ remains a defiant, delightful oddity
Reading Time: 2 minutes The first time I saw Věra Chytilová’s Daisies was on a double bill with Godard’s Weekend at the New Beverly in Los Angeles, circa 2014. I went in blind and was rewarded with 76 minutes of anarchistic joy. Earlier this week I happened upon yet another screening of Daisies, this time a 4K restoration at […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Review: ‘Prey’ is a trophy case of good filmmaking
Reading Time: 2 minutes Concluding 2022’s surprise “women marching into the dark, unknowable wilderness” trilogy that began with Firestarter and Hellbender is Dan Trachtenberg’s remarkable Prey. Quietly the fifth installment of the Predator franchise, a series of action/science fiction films involving extraterrestrial game hunters, Prey is the rare prequel unencumbered by lore or smug callbacks that refines the core […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Review: ‘Strawberry Mansion’ an imaginative delight
Reading Time: 2 minutes Upon finishing the charmingly lo-fi Strawberry Mansion, which I and much of the rest of society missed this past February (it earned a little over $97 thousand at the box office), I went into one of those semi-deranged Google search death spirals, so vexed by the memory of some reminiscent genre-bending pastiche. The movie in […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Review: ‘Elvis’ + ‘Top Gun: Maverick’
Reading Time: 3 minutes I’m hard pressed to name anything registering as a complete scene in Elvis, Baz Luhrmann’s fever dream of an Elvis Presley biopic that doesn’t so much cover the landmark events of the superstar musician’s life and career as it condenses those moments into an extended trailer advertising the American mid-twentieth century. That isn’t a criticism; […]