Every writer has a book that changes them – a particular volume that hits you like a thunderbolt, magnifying with crystal clarity what the best prose can do, and what you could only hope, on your best day, to approach. For me, that book was Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train (out in a handsome new,...

In late February, Netflix started listing the most popular offerings of the day on its homepage, ranking the Top 10 movies/series in the country. And for almost every day since its March 20 debut, the documentary miniseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness has been in either the No. 1 spot...

The story in Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity (2007) concerns a young San Diego couple, Micah and Katie, who set up a camera to document the strange occurrences in their house. On the surface, it’s a horror film about battling supernatural forces — not exactly new ground for the genre. But...

In 2018, social media fragility and the internalization of fears keep people trapped, much like the subjects of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) are trapped as they sift through media information while the unthinkable threatens their safety. Even though Night of the Living...

Anarchic cartoons like the old Warner Bros. and Fleischer Studios shorts are always popular with children (even if many of them were not originally written for them) because they appeal to the fantasy of control. Children are not in control of their day-to-day lives, and these cartoons allow them...

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby As...

“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” This quote is often attributed to George Bernard Shaw, but its real origins lie in G. Stanley Hall’s 1904 book Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime,...

Arguably the first mainstream American film to portray contemporary occultism in depth, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby — released 50 years ago this month — premiered as a palpable fascination with the occult was taking hold. Based upon Ira Levin’s bestselling novel, various real-life...

Four movies deep and 20 degrees down, my brother and I were the last ones left at the Aut-O-Rama Twin. The only other survivor — a hardy family piled in and around a pickup truck — must’ve bailed while I was in the bathroom. When I shambled out of the brick bunker, under the red humming...

When an Israeli pilot refused to take off for another shot out of sheer exhaustion, Menahem Golan threatened him at gunpoint until the landing gear left the ground. This early anecdote sets the tone for Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, a 2014 documentary about the company...

November is the month wherein movie lovers, programmers, and critics turn their attention to the genre of film noir — Noirvember as it’s come to be known. While the main impetus for this is undoubtedly the hashtag-friendly wordplay of the name, there really is no time of the year that better...

There have been few career turnarounds and rapid-fire ascendancies in Hollywood as impressive as Taylor Sheridan’s. A working actor for the last 20 years, he subsisted on bit parts almost exclusively (he had a recurring role on the FX biker series Sons of Anarchy, which ended in 2014). He was, by...

When you hear the words “fan fiction,” you might think of something like a 2,000-word wish fulfillment detailing Luke Skywalker’s happy marriage to Han Solo as they take care of an idyllic forest cottage in a galaxy far, far away. In your head, it’s probably riddled with grammatical...

Practical Magic (1998) pits the magic of women against the villainy of an abusive man while showing the power of sisterhood. The movie equates witchcraft with feminism, reflecting the historical reality that witch trials have been used to punish the behavior of transgressive women. Through the...

The Devil has been a prominent part of film since its inception, but the depiction of Lucifer has changed with the times to reflect humanity’s vices. Let’s look at how Lucifer has transitioned from the big-horned behemoth into the shifting shape of a man he is today. (In the interest of time...