By Marlisa Santos. As the movie-viewing public was becoming more comfortable with these kinds of filmic depictions, poster art, never to shy away from marketing hooks, aimed to tantalize prospective audiences with images that promised entrance into a suspenseful world of increasingly commonplace criminality and subversion of systemic stability…. University […]
“Hitchcock is Grammar”: Mark Cousins on My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
By Jonathan Monovich. A lot of people talk about the scary Hitchcock, the manipulative Hitchcock, or the anti-feminist Hitchcock, but in looking at his films I wanted to see what really were the themes and where the humanity was in his work.” Mark Cousins Mark Cousins has dedicated his life […]
The Phantom (1931): Hollywood’s First Independent Horror Movie
By Gary D. Rhodes. Even if it is not at the artistic level of many of those produced in the months, years, and decades that followed, The Phantom exemplifies ambition over vision. Its speed of production placed it in a pole position, independent of competition, let alone studios, a position […]
“The Invisible Man”: Race in Horror Films
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.”
Long Live the Pope‘s Secrets!: Edward Berger’s Conclave
By Elias Savada. Berger’s take on the Catholic Church makes Conclave a thoroughly enjoyable thrill ride.” The Pope is dead; long live the Pope‘s secrets. Papal riddles abound in this most peculiar political page-turner set in the Vatican, and the hunt for answers through every nook and cranny also finds […]
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 […]
Cinema without Reason: Quentin Dupieux’s Daaaaaalí!
By Jonathan Monovich. Dupieux’s Daaaaaalí! understands that to make a faithful film about Dalí it should lack convention.” Though Salvador Dalí’s paintings are far more famous than his contributions to cinema, Dalí’s peculiar signature left an indelible mark on film history as well. Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s collaboration, Un chien […]
Shedding Old Skin: Ramon and Silvan Zürcher on The Sparrow in the Chimney
By Yun-hua Chen. For me, the third installment of the trilogy is about liberation and breaking out of certain emotional or psychological prisons, shedding old skin so that new skin can grow. The sparrow is important because of this potential for freedom and flight.” —Ramon Zürcher From cat to spider, […]
“Old as Dirt”: Common Ground
By Jonathan Monovich. The kind of film that leaves you invigorated, full of energy, and wanting to fight the good fight.” In Joshua and Rebecca Tickell’s well-informed documentary, Kiss the Ground (2020), Woody Harrelson spoke of a solution “as old as dirt” that may help prevent humanity’s demise. The solution […]