Tag: Theme: Film & Cinema
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Alien: Romulus: An Abortive Attempt at Homage to a Classic
Romulus started out promising, then proved itself an awful disappointment. The original Alien (1979) is far and away one of my favourite sci-fi films, one I’ve written about in the past, and I have a lot of affection for Aliens (1986) and even Alien 3 (1992), for all I feel it has its narrative flaws.…
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The Devouring Gaze in The First Omen
The horror of surveillance and surveilling in Arkasha Stevenson’s The First Omen (2024). Cap via ScreenAnarchy. I was saying the other night after we came out of the cinema that for the past few years, it really feels like I can trust horror films more than virtually any other film — horror films generally have a specific, presumed…
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Crimson Peak: A Love Letter To Gothic Romance
Adoring thoughts on Guillermo Del Toro’s 2015 masterpiece. This review and bit of analysis is related to the talk I’ll be giving on Crimson Peak tomorrow, responses to misogyny and marginalisation in and around Gothic fiction, and how much of this social conservatism is mirrored in BookTok and modern retorts to problematic fiction. All proceeds…
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The Real Harm in “Harmful Content”
Exploring the true harm in “harmful content” and “problematic” media. Originally published in An Injustice! We live, unfortunately, in a world increasingly defined by people’s lack of media literacy. It isn’t as simple as people not reading, because people do — as schools and universities increasingly cut or allocate resources away from English literature, history, and other…
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So you finished Our Flag Means Death…
What show do you want to obsess over now? So, Our Flag Means Death, unexpected workplace romcom chock-a-block with anachronistic 18th century fun, piracy on the high seas, gay and trans and otherwise genderweird and queer characters, not to mention neurodivergent and disabled ones, is over for at least another year. You’re aching for something of…
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Barbie Isn’t Anti-Men — It’s Anti-Toxicity
Patriarchy does damage to us all, and Barbie (2023, dir. Greta Gerwig) clearly depicts that. Via IMDb. We went to see Greta Gerwig’s Barbie at the weekend and I was honestly surprised by how much I engaged with it — it’s a fun, entertaining flick, but where it really took me by surprise is in the three-dimensionality and…
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Yentl: A Trans Man Studying Talmud is Distracted by Gay Thoughts
Yentl (1983, dir. Barbra Streisand) and Yentl the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Any of us would be distracted from study by Mandy Patinkin. Via IMDb. It’s a sad thing, hearing cisgender people talk about Yentl — especially the short story — and think they understand it, that they’re getting everything from it, while at the same time, they can’t…
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The Wicker Man (1973, dir. Robin Hardy)’s Spit in the Face of Cops and Colonialism
Exploring The Wicker Man’s themes of authority and control on its 50th anniversary. Still from The Wicker Man (1973, dir. Robin Hardy), via FILMGRAB. The Wicker Man (1973, dir. Robin Hardy) is a stalwart classic of the horror genre, and particularly the folk horror subgenre. It was re-released in 4K for its 50th anniversary on…