Tag: analysis
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Perfect Movies: American Psycho
“You like Huey Lewis & The News?” I sure do, and Patrick Bateman makes a great argument for the strengths of their 1983 breakthrough album, Sports. It would be a great moment in any retro film for the main character to espouse his love of mainstream contemporary music, but becoming a counterpoint to the action […]
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Great TV: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Although this is primarily a movie site, television is also written about here, mostly because the lines between TV and film have become increasingly blurred over the years. Just as the series of articles on Great TV is a section of this site, there have been a fair amount of articles written about the terrible, […]
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Sleepaway Camp
I never went to camp as a kid. Growing up in Missouri, there was plenty of available open space and fresh air right where I lived, and besides that, my folks were never the type to want to ship their kids off for extended periods (also, I was a real sweety pie). After watching Sleepaway […]
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The Greasy Strangler
I enjoy weird films. If it’s cult, obscure, transgressive, shocking, or just plain bizarre, I’ll seek it out and consume it like it’s garmonbozia. But why this sort of fare? I don’t have particularly bizarre habits, behaviors, or even interests (unless you think nerdy obsessions with rhetorical theory and critical discourse as weird, which OK […]
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The Ghost of Frankenstein
Here comes the the horror classic(?) The Ghost of Frankenstein. I’m not very familiar with the original Universal horror film library in general, but since Frankie’s story has been made over and over again literally hundreds of times, due to cultural osmosis its tropes, basic story outline, and visual rhetoric is well-known enough to be […]
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Hellraiser
There’s something very disturbing about the monsters of Hellraiser, and it’s not just their looks (although that aspect of them is terrifying). It’s that they’re so…calm. Almost like they’re bored with the idea of having to rip your soul apart, an unwanted detour on their path to the next extreme S&M party they’re hosting. Unlike […]
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Perfect Directors: Wes Anderson
Cozy worlds. That’s what Wes Anderson builds in his films: cozy worlds where everything is in its right place, every room and setting has character, and every character is fully realized. And they come to realizations in these cozy worlds, whether floating on a ship, whiling away in an academy, bouncing around the suburbs, cloistered […]
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Perfect Directors: Robert Altman
I am an American. That is to say, I was born in, and have spent my entire life, in the United States of America. Everything I know about the world–if not reality itself–is filtered through my experiences and understanding from the sliver of time I’ve been alive from the late 20th to early 21st century […]
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Perfect Directors: Coen Brothers
Crime. Thriller. Drama. Comedy. Western. All are well-worn genres in film but it’s rare to have them fit into the same picture, much less mesh together to create a unique film. But this is the signature talent of the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan. As original a pair as their films, this duo have been […]
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Perfect Movies: Blade Runner
Do androids dream of electric sheep? This question–the title of Philip K. Dick’s novel that serves as the basis for 1982’s Blade Runner–becomes the film’s central thesis, as android bounty hunter Rick Deckard is tasked with bringing in six Nexus-6 androids that have gone on the lam. Meanwhile, Deckard meets and eventually falls for an […]
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Perfect Movies: The Breakfast Club
It is a truth universally acknowledged that being a teenager sucks. Not objectively, of course: as an increasingly cantankerous adult, I look at teenagers and want to let them know that they are young and healthy and will never be this free or full of promise again in their lives so they should stop moping […]
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Perfect Movies: Goodfellas
“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” This wry confession comes from the narrator and protagonist of the film–who will soon be formally introduced as Henry Hill–hovering over a body in the trunk of his car, bathed in the red light of his brake lights in the darkness […]
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