Role-Playing Writ Small: I Kill Giants

By Elias Savada. Children dealing with their fears – although not those anxieties normally associated with horror genre tropes like The Dark, Loud Noises, and such – play a central role in I Kill Giants, which melds one Eastern Long Island, New York, family’s enigmatic trauma with monstrous, noxious beasts that […]

Comedy Killing Satire: The Death of Stalin

By Jake Rutkowski. The process of interpersonal grievances and small-scale ironies rippling out into matters of national security is at this point a calling card for celebrated Scottish satirist Armando Iannucci (he of Alan Partridge, The Thick of It / In the Loop, and Veep fame). It’s fair to say that […]

A Misguided Adventure: A Wrinkle in Time

By Elias Savada. If I were a 12-year-old girl (particularly one of color), I probably would be anxiously awaiting, with all my BFFs, the arrival of A Wrinkle in Time, the transformative adaptation (as opposed to the dismal 2003 television version, also brought to you by Disney) of the beloved, best-selling […]

More Mood Than Mayhem: They Remain

By Elias Savada. In case you’re not feeling enough dread after watching Natalie Portman push her way through The Shimmer in the unsettling Annihilation, there are similar aural, low-frequency bass rumblings that might send your mind and body into similar fits in the smaller but nearly as disquieting They Remain. […]

More Complications: Films of the New French Extremity by Alexandra West

A Book Review by Alex Brannan. When James Quandt coined the term “New French Extremity” in a piece for ArtForum, he referred to such a naming as something a “critic truffle-snuffing for trends” might do (“Flesh and blood”). Perhaps to his own chagrin, he was snuffing in exactly the right […]

Pedestrian Action: 7 Guardians of the Tomb

By Elias Savada. The Mummy was a huge, expensive flop last year, and relics of the archaeology digs genre are still up and about (Lara Croft is due back shortly). But if you have a craving for some lame action adventure down under from Down Under, 7 Guardians of the Tomb […]

Coincidence and Conviction: Irving Pichel’s Tomorrow is Forever (1946)

By Jeremy Carr. It takes a sustained suspension of disbelief to accept what is tendered by Tomorrow is Forever. To permit the premise of this 1946 romantic drama, it is imperative for one to pardon its convoluted plotline and its unyielding dedication to coincidence. And fortunately, such is the quality of […]

Too Much “Up-skirt”: Lipstick Under My Burkha

By Devapriya Sanyal. Alankrita Srivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha looks at the lives of four women who live in Hawai manzil: Bua ji, who has forgotten her own name as no one calls her by that name anymore; Leela, who works in a neighbourhood beauty parlour and soon to be married; and […]