Going Back to Things Unknown with ‘The Outer Limits’
The Outer Limits is a mix of sci-fi nightmares, and surrealism – the very things that make life worth living even though they scare the bejeebers out of us.
surrealism
On Satyajit Ray’s Make Believe World in The Hero
The Hero has deliciously surreal nightmares of obvious symbolism -- skeletons under piles of money, a nightclub in a spectral forest -- and these seem to give Satyajit Ray and Subrata Mitra special chiaroscuro joy.
Criterion’s ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ Is a Semiotic Feast
Sheryl Lee’s iconic performance as Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me evokes epic sorrow and haunting tragedy.
Andrzej Żuławski Finds Love and Family in the ‘Cosmos’
At its heart, Cosmos is a very human story born from rudiments both otherworldly and oneiric.
Parochial Hierarchy in Walerian Borowczyk’s ‘Goto, Isle of Love’
Shot in lustrous black and white, Borowczyk’s film straddles an impossible line between grim drama and ramshackle fantasy.
In ‘The Last Days of New Paris’, Art Kills Nazis
In Miéville’s imagining, art isn't something to hang in a museum. It is politics. It is freedom. Like Woody Guthrie’s guitar of old, this art kills fascists.
Nightmare Visions in ‘The Quay Brothers: Collected Short Films’
The mechanical, the insectile and the organically gooey world of beautiful ugliness in the Quay Brothers’ short films.
Salvador Dalí’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ Work Finally Gets Some Mad Love
This edition is valuable because it underscores a variety of connections that are generally not foregrounded in the work of either Lewis Carroll or Salvador Dalí.
‘Dreaming of Cinema’ Demonstrates Why the Humanities Are Out of Touch
For better or worse, contemporary scholars in cinema studies spend more time drawing from and debating one another than talking about films.