Features

By Jeremy Carr. Alien 3’s tumultuous genesis and the abundant what-could-have-beens have left many fans of the Alien series to wonder how else the picture could have materialized. Providing one of the more compelling cases is William Gibson’s unmade screenplay….” There was little doubt that whatever came next would have […]

By Christopher Sharrett. Peter Jackson’s new documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, culled from fifty hours of film left over from the 1970 film Let It Be…tends to make [their breakup] rosier than it was, with the band in a mostly kindly mood but for a couple of nasty scrapes.” The […]

By James Slaymaker. Anderson is evidently not without talent, but he has continuously proven to be content to rest on his laurels…. The French Dispatch ultimately amounts to nothing more than hollow juvenilia.” Towards the end of Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, a group of staff writers, illustrators and other […]

By Tony Williams. Major Dundee dissects the soul of a particular form of dangerous American ambition taking short cuts, left and right, to achieve its aims.” The films of Sam Peckinpah are as controversial as the director’s personality, especially the problematic question of Major Dundee (1965). Was this a possible […]

By James Slaymaker. The final act of retribution may not have any longstanding effect on the military-industrial complex, but Tell has, at least, committed himself to one, concrete action which he knows to be just.” In the opening sequence of The Addiction (1995), Abel Ferrara’s deeply chilling existential horror film […]

By Christopher Sharrett. I very much recommend Haynes’s film, but, [f]or me at least, it’s a reminder of all that has disappeared….” Todd Haynes’s new film The Velvet Underground has an obvious place in the filmmaker’s oeuvre; it connects to his early film Poison (1991) and much that followed, films […]

By Frank Krutnik. Renowned for his groundbreaking work on genre, Neale has also made key interventions into other areas of film and media criticism…. [He] is not afraid to challenge critical orthodoxies, but does so not in a grandstanding manner but with a persuasive equanimity that invites us to rethink […]

By James Slaymaker. Old reveals itself to be a deeply nuanced, emotionally resonant, structurally experimental and formally rigorous work of art. It’s also a work clearly informed by the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, even though it doesn’t make any explicit references….” This article contains spoilers for M. Night […]

“The Form of Things Unknown,” 1.32 (4 May 1964) By Tony Williams. Stefano was a master writer for the screen and capable of doing better things had circumstances allowed, as this revealing limited edition collection shows.” For those who have watched The Outer Limits either from its first transmission in […]

By Christopher Sharrett. Tobe Hooper became a poet of the American twilight, of the dead American Dream warned about by any number of artists…. As I have noted elsewhere, Hooper immediately lets us know that his concerns are broad and deep.” I recall my first screening of The Texas Chain […]