Tag: culture
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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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Perfect Movies: Monkey Business
There was no more perfect comedy configuration on film than the Marx Brothers. I have had some dark days (and wow, who hasn’t?) and despite hardships or emotional upset, I can turn on a Marx Brothers movie and it lifts my soul completely for at least a short while – and hopefully for a while […]
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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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Perfect Movies: The Big Lebowski
The Dude abides. But how? With the Gulf War raging in the background and as the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune–mostly concerning a soiled rug that really tied the room together that escalates into a wild series of improbable events–fall about him, The Dude, bleary-eyed as always, maintains an inner calm. Everyone else around […]
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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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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: Spike Lee
Listen: I am not black. In fact, I am one of the most lily-white people on the planet. Nor do I have any particular connection to Black culture besides what I’ve gleaned from media outlets, TV, and movies. What I’m trying to relate in this opening salvo is that the complex racial history of America […]
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Radical 90’s: Introduction
As America pivoted from the 1980’s to the 1990’s, the culture as a whole seemed to undergo a seismic shift: from the staunch conservatism that dominated the previous decade, by 1991 the entirety of the country seemed to shrug off the social and economic mores that centered the country after the chaotic 1960’s and hippie […]
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Perfect Movies: Saving Private Ryan
Many films have been made glorifying war: from Sands of Iwo Jima to American Sniper, American films in particular like to depict soldiers who fight the country’s battles across the globe in a heroic light. And, to be fair, there have been numerous anti-war films made–All Quiet on the Western Front, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and […]
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Totally 80’s: Blockbusters!
As stated in the introduction to this series, if 1980’s Hollywood perfected anything, it was marketing: demographic research, adherence to the four-quadrant model (males under 25; females under 25; males over 25; females over 25), high concept movies, and chasing the ultimate, the “Blockbuster” movie, were the primary motivators of big-business, big-budget Hollywood. Gone were […]
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