Tribeca 2021: ‘Settlers’ Thrills But Blunts Its Message
Wyatt Rockefeller’s sci-fi/western drama about a Martian settlement, Settlers, undercuts its allegory about Western colonization.
sci-fi
The Martian Chronicles: A Tale of Two Apocalypses
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles calls out from the past to our time of pandemic and NASA’s Mars Space Rover: however far our reach may be there is no escape for humankind from humankind.
The Strange and the Disturbingly Familiar in Sci-Fi Graphic Fiction, ‘Peepers’
Even the scenery in sci-fi graphic fiction ‘Peepers’ looks like the lucid dreams of a Fauvist painter on acid.
‘Little Fish’ Director on Love and Loss During Pandemic
Little Fish director Chad Hartigan talks with PopMatters about his fascination with love, memory, and losing the ability to remember.
The Mandalorian’s Political Allegory: Diversity Is the Way
When the president of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy announced there will be more than 10 Star Wars shows and films coming out, she declared that popular culture is a space of diversity. All stories can and should be told simultaneously and adjacently.
Exploring the Sci-fi Worlds of Ishirō Honda in 3 Films
The devastating power of the atomic bomb casts a long shadow over Ishiro Honda's The H-Man, Battle in Outer Space, and Mothra, now available on Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment.
‘Captain America: Civil War’ Mirrors Another Kind of American Civil War
In the Russo Brothers' Captain America: Civil War, friend turns on friend, and no easy resolution is reached. It's rather like the toxic online fan culture that followed the film's release.
Scorsese’s ‘World Cinema Project No. 3’ Has a Filtered Gaze
Scorsese's selections for World Cinema Project No. 3 recall an attitude typical of a bygone age of film studies when professors would rationalize overlooking the reactionary politics of a film because aspects of the filmmaking itself trumped such "trivial" concerns.
The 20 Best Episodes of ‘Star Trek: The Original Series’
This is a timeless list of 20 thrilling Star Trek episodes that delight, excite, and entertain, all the while exploring the deepest aspects of the human condition and questioning our place in the universe.
‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ Makes the Most of Meta Commentary
Spider-Man: Far From Home ties up the themes of deception and Trump-era media manipulation and it ensures that the next Spider-Man film will be completely different from anything that came before.
Beautiful Lies and False Gods in ‘Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice’
Zack Snyder's Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice interrogates two primal drives in American culture through the top characters of the DC pantheon: fear and its trauma (Batman) and naked power and its ambiguities (Superman).