By Indya J. Jackson. Ultimately [through the depiction of failed mothers] Singleton replicates the anti-Black, anti-poor, and misogynistic rhetoric of neoliberal reformists by embedding a definite preference for fathers and the heteropatriarchal family structure within his films.” After Boyz N the Hood (1991) launched John Singleton into rarefied air, he […]
Object Incidents and the Wilderness of Speech in Howard Hawks’s Ball of Fire (1941)
By George Toles. Expressive objects abound in the world of Ball of Fire. What makes an object cinematically expressive? Let us begin by thinking about a door [which] becomes more charged with significance if we are led to assume that the room behind it contains an armed criminal or a […]
Satirizing Horror and Spellbinding the Social Contract: Weapons (2025)
By David Ryan. As a follow-up to Zach Cregger’s horror drama Barbarian (2022), Weapons explores the recursive relationship between personal antagonisms and the erosion of civic trust, staging what Robin Wood identifies as horror’s central tension—the destabilization of the social order….” With Weapons (2025), writer-director Zach Cregger leans on the […]
When Jaws Premiered; or, the Hottest and Coolest Weekend on Record
By Gary D. Rhodes. The great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open.” — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851) Friday, June 20, 1975. Newspapers report the assassination of mob boss Sam “Momo” Giancana. Gerald Ford authorized his campaign to start fundraising for his presidential bid. Postal workers picketed in Washington, D.C. The House […]
A Futurist Fascination – Strangelove Country: Science Fiction, Filmosophy, and the Kubrickian Consciousness
A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. A well-researched work of personal scholarship, with an array of sources and citations utilized to substantiate D. Harlan Wilson’s own arguments or to initiate new avenues of thought….” D. Harlan Wilson wastes little time establishing the importance of the science fiction genre to […]
Longing for a Hollywood Ending – Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel
A Book Review Essay by Andrew Kolarik. [Author Pardis Dabashi] makes the case that an understanding of modernist authors’ relationship to cinema might allow their works to be read in a different light….” Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel (The University of Chicago Press) by Pardis […]
Still Underground: Films That Spill – Beyond the Cinema of Transgression
A Book Review Essay by Johannes Schönherr. German scholar Marie Sophie Beckmann discusses inherent contradictions of the ‘spilling’ of the films into other art forms as well as the ‘spilling’ of the films as ‘contained’ entities (films on video) to a worldwide audience in detail.’” When Nick Zedd, the mastermind […]
So You Think You’ve Seen Weird Docs?: Gary D. Rhodes on the Weirdumentary
By Roger Nygard. We yearn to know the secrets of our mind, whether its power can lead to telekinesis or precognition. We yearn to know what lies beyond, from the world of ghosts to the world of alien life forms….” –Gary D. Rhodes I remember how Hammer Film’s Five Million […]
The Return (2024): Penelope’s Looming Odyssey and Odysseus’s Trauma Narrative
By David Ryan. Aspires to explore important themes about perception and insight from a trauma-focused narrative but is often undone by its own scrimping of dramatic focus and coherence.” Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (2024) is a mature but disappointing adaptation of the last few books of Homer’s The Odyssey, centering […]
A Self-Defeating Genre Mashup: On Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Coogler’s strong character work in the film’s first half undercuts his efforts to embrace pure horror in its second.” Spoiler Alert Ryan Coogler’s knack for bringing a humanist touch to a variety of genres—starting with social realism (Fruitvale Station), transitioning to crowd-pleasing sports sagas (Creed), and […]