INTERVIEW: “Racial representation in visual horror fictions have also become a trope in the way that audiences do not expect to see minorities—or at least not very often and not alive for very long. Due to long-standing tropes, minorities in visual horror fictions have become, in a sense, invisible.”
Hollywood’s Star of Stars – Ferocious Ambition: Joan Crawford’s March to Stardom
A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. More than a mere biography with chronological touchstones and historical anecdotes (though there are plenty of those, and they’re fascinating), it is also a psychological profile delving into the inner motivations of its subject, and a lavishly illustrated assessment of how a Golden […]
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion: M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap
By James Slaymaker. Shyamalan’s careful misdirection reveals much about his protagonist, the society he lives in, and the capacity of cinematic form to perpetuate dominant cultural values.” Spoilier Alert In the final sequence of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap (2024), there’s a moment when Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett), a serial murderer […]
Steven Zaillian’s Ripley: Neo-Noir or Revisionary Noir?
By M. Keith Booker. Many aspects of Zaillian’s series, both thematic and visual, make it an almost perfect example of neo-noir. Yet, in other ways, Ripley goes beyond the original noir cycle in ways that are reminiscent of the best revisionary noir films.” In my new book American Noir Film: […]
The Substance is a Documentary
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. As far as emotional fidelity is concerned, The Substance is a documentary. No other film I have ever seen so perfectly captures my subjective experience of the culturally enforced dissociation that happens en masse when, as a woman, your body starts to age.” I recently turned 50. […]
In a Motley Assortment: On Filmmaker Joanna Hogg
By Shonni Enelow. Hogg’s films present rich and compelling psychological characters while eschewing that legibility of motive.” Hogg’s films capture the tones and rhythms of contemporary relation quite differently from other historical realisms. The half-spoken, half-interrupted speech of her characters, the way they repeat themselves, revise their words, in conjunction […]
Lost and Found: In Praise of Josh’s Blair Witch Mix (1999)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. The Blair Witch Project – Josh’s Blair Witch Mix (1999) can be found online in full at Archive.org here. The essence of The Blair Witch Project that has made it so compulsively alluring for me has largely remained as elusive to me as ever. And then I […]
The Miyazaki Interlude: The Conscious and Unconscious Intervals of The Boy and the Heron (2023)
By David Ryan. Miyazaki moves beyond illustrating simple contrasts by creating relationships in apposition (not opposition), and this interdependency often encourages experiential growth for his younger protagonists.” Writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s films are carefully planned adventures into the realms of innocence and experience. His abstract themes and dense stories have garnered […]
Docu-mania: The Introduction to Crafting Contemporary Documentaries and Docuseries for Global Screens
By Phoebe Hart. Crafting Contemporary Documentaries and Docuseries for Global Screens delves into the processes by which the study participants, all creative practitioners, learn skills and acquire inspiration and mastery, and specific rituals and habits of practice.” Since its inception, the documentary film has steadily grown in form and reception, […]
The Triple Protagonist Film: Challengers, Sex, and Gender
By David Greven. Echoing classical Hollywood and classical myth, the triple protagonist film of the present breaks new ground while reinforcing longstanding myths about sexuality and gender stereotypes.” In Luca Guadagnino’s great films, such as Call Me By Your Name (2017), Bones and All (2022), and I Am Love (2009), […]