War for the Planet of the Apes may be the least subtle film I have ever seen. Of course, not every film has to be subtle, but at a certain point, enduring a movie that […]
Category Archives: Movies
Senior Citizen: Gender, Infirmity and Horror
You wouldn’t know it from the amount of time I spend thinking, talking, and writing about horror cinema, but I’m actually not a huge horror fan. I’ll spend hours falling through a TV Tropes or […]
Wonder Woman: The Hero We Need in a Film That Falls Short
After seeing Wonder Woman last Friday and having a chat on Facebook Live to share our immediate impressions, Anita and I exchanged emails this weekend to discuss the film in more detail once we’d had […]
Absolutely Badasses: Looking Back on Vasquez, 30 Years Later
My parents’ attitude toward selecting films to watch on family movie nights was pretty loose when I was young. They’d refined the criteria a bit more by the time my brother was able to sit […]
Blue Belle: Femininity, Fashion and a ‘Tale as Old as Time’
Let’s state the obvious right up front: Beauty and the Beast is a Disney film. What this means is that it follows a long history of formulaic narratives involving young women in a bit of […]
Logan: A Film Fighting With Itself
It’s telling that Logan, Hugh Jackman’s final outing as Wolverine after playing the character for 17 years, heavily references a moment in Shane, the legendary 1953 Western. Specifically, it references the moment when gunfighter Shane […]
Well, Too Bad We Can’t Stay
I saw Get Out among a predominantly white audience this weekend. The decision was spontaneous and swift — there was a showing near me (in the white-ass suburb in which I live) at the perfect […]
Hall of Mirrors: Facing Patriarchy in the Media, Facing Ourselves
John Wick is “a man of focus,” as another character describes him early in John Wick: Chapter 2. Once he sets his mind on a singular task, you don’t want to come between him and […]
Real American Heroes: The White Male Heteronormativity of Peter Berg’s Patriot’s Day
Patriot’s Day is Boston’s day to celebrate its sense of community: it’s a day for the entire city to literally commune, shoulder to shoulder, lining Beacon or Boylston Street while witnessing awe-inspiring performances of muscle […]
Ghostbusters (2016) Review
In the 1989 film Ghostbusters II, Peter, Ray, Winston and Egon discover that “mood slime” is being powered by all the hatred and aggression in New York to bring the city to the brink of […]