Michael Winterbottom’s ‘Shoshana’ and the Slow Death of the Prolific Auteur
Like Steven Soderbergh, director Michael Winterbottom has become very good at shapeshifting, making his work difficult to shoehorn into a genre.
Film Feature
Batman Returns’ Delirious Psychosexual Tension
The stitches, the shadows, the skin and the other psychosexual tension and animalistic identities of Batman Returns.
‘The Brutalist’ Delivers a Bold Revision of the American Dream
The American Dream promises that anyone can build a better life through hard work. The Brutalist demolishes this notion.
‘Peter Hujar’s Day’ Finds and Makes Meaning in the Mundane
Ben Whishaw achieves something close to dialectical mesmerism in Peter Hujar’s Day; his performance is simultaneously monumental and mundane.
Three Japanese Horror Classics Haunted by Women’s Agony
If there’s an undercurrent throughout the Japanese horror in Daiei Gothic Vol. 2, it’s how women’s suffering is so embedded in Japanese folklore.
12 Horror Movies That Burrow Into Our Psyches
These 12 psyche-burrowing, Halloween-perfect horror movies indulge our damned desire to explore the dark inner recesses of our selves and society.
Why Found Footage Horror Movies Keep Creeping Back
In an era when cameras dictate and distort our perception, found-footage horror movies keep creeping back into our never-wholly-real, uncanny world.
‘Friday the 13th: Part III’ and the Third Dimension of the Incel
In Friday the 13th: Part III, Jason Voorhees’ evolving behavior hints at disturbing autonomy and sexual aggression that, in today’s parlance, we deem “incel”.
‘The Shining’ and the Power of Murderous Narratives
The Shining endures because it conveys all horror, real and imagined: Stephen King’s horror of the collapse of Man, and Stanley Kubrick’s collapse of History.
The Best 1970s Horror Movies for Halloween
The fears 1970s horror movies face are no less so now, but they create just enough distance from our reality this Halloween that we can at least peer through our fingers to watch them.
One Battle After Another’s Appealing Radical Heart
One Battle After Another‘s sympathetic portrayals of left-wing radicalized groups seems an impossible-to-resist target of the pearl-clutching, but it’s been less of a lightning rod than expected on that front.
‘RachelOrmont’ Is Peter Vack’s Candy-Colored Feel Bad Shock Cinema
Peter Vack’s candy-colored RachelOrmont dares the squeamish to reckon with the schizoid darkness happening on cellphones all around them.