Review

By Jacob Mertens. I must be getting old. Three or four years ago, I would probably find This is the End a humorous apocalyptic romp not be taken too seriously, a worthy diversion of my time. Now, I laugh here and there and leave thinking “What do I take away […]

By Cleaver Patterson. It may be hard for many to remember a time before Google. The ubiquitous search-engine is, for better or worse, the first stop on the World Wide Web for a large proportion of internet users when they are looking for information on … well, anything to be […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Tales of vengeful murder victims whose spirits take on the shape of animals in order to exact revenge upon those who did them wrong, form the origin of legends the world over. However few can be as bewitching, or darkly romantic, as the Japanese folktale The Cat’s […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Sometimes it is hard to fathom why some films flourish and increase in popularity over time, whilst other equally deserving works are left to gather dust on the back shelf of film obscurity. Spider Baby (1968) – also known under the alternative titles Cannibal Orgy and Attack […]

By Robert Kenneth Dator. Rebel Without a Cause (1955); East of Eden (1956); Giant (1956); three films, and only three, classics all and the stuff of legend, starring the only actor to truly give a young Marlon Brando a run for his money: James Dean. The only thing more difficult to […]

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “‘We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union . . .’ When our original Founding Fathers first set these words to paper, they strove to ‘establish Justice’, ‘insure domestic Tranquility’ and ‘promote the general Welfare.’ Today, the world is a much different place, […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Superman has been reborn, and from hereon shall be known as the Man of Steel – at least he will if Warner Bros. Pictures’ new CGI heavy extravaganza is to be believed. Forget anything you think you know about Clark Kent and his alien alter-ego, as this […]

By Mark James.  Here’s a problem: people are things as well as they are people. Not as much as people are people, clearly, but people’s sensual bodies as well as their social being exist in precisely the same plane of things-in-the-world, as junk at a flea market or artifacts in […]

By Mark James.  The documentary Chimeras is a contemplative, respectful attempt to look at Chinese modernity through the lens of its art. The film ends with a tripartite definition of the title. A chimera is a mythological beast made of different animal parts; a wild, unrealistic dream or fantasy; and […]

By Matthew Sorrento. Just like the cinema, the magic show is rooted in the nature of looking. After all, the illusionist’s art is to trick the eye into seeing something different, or redirecting the eye’s attention. The earliest cinematic prototypes, like the zoetrope and the kineograph, produce optical illusions but […]