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...

An interest in sex is common ground for most people, but not for me. There’s no onscreen depiction of sex that arouses me. It’s foreign at best and horrifying at worst. Why? Because I’m asexual. Let’s clear a few things up first. No, being asexual is not the same thing as being celibate,...

Jeremy Saulnier knows violence. The director of Hold the Dark (arriving on Netflix this week) makes movies filled with brutal, intense fights and attacks. And they aren’t the sanitized action sequences of blockbuster superhero or sci-fi movies, nor are they the often cartoonish, over-the-top gory...

Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird have recently been praised for dealing seriously with their young female subjects, the filmmakers giving teenage girls’ lives the meticulous treatment that Hollywood usually reserves for, I don’t know, Breaking Bad, or films about dead...

Some movies conjure up bittersweet recollections while emitting positive vibes. That’s all part of the cinematic experience — relating to subject material but still allowing the deepest cuts to bleed, and immersing yourself in uncensored memories from a more naive time, all in the name of...

Twenty years after Rounders’ release, the gambling narrative remains applicable in a world of post-20th-century hustlers. Written by the creative team behind Showtime’s Billions (Brian Koppelman and David Levien), John Dahl’s film captures the spirit of underground poker and the skillset...

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...

When Amazon’s Jack Ryan series debuts this weekend, John Krasinski will become the fifth actor to play Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst in just under three decades. The new Ryan, pitted against Middle Eastern terrorists, comes four years after Chris Pine’s version faced off wit nefarious Russians in...

Based on the evidence of their early shorts and first two features – 2009’s Amer and 2013’s The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears – Belgian filmmakers Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet have internalized the tropes of the giallo to such a degree that they don’t need to quote directly...

In the spring of 1988, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince released the album He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper, featuring the single “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” a massive hit that would go on to win the first-ever Grammy for best rap performance. The album’s next single was to be “A...

Thirty years ago this month, the world saw the release of one of the most divisive movies ever made: Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. The film stands almost unrivaled in terms of ferocity of backlash and cultural import, and the controversy it inspired helped establish the...

When Pineapple Express was released in the summer of 2008, it was seen as a major departure for director David Gordon Green, best known at the time for well-observed character studies like George Washington (2000), All the Real Girls (2002), and Undertow (2004, with executive producer Terrence...

The sixth Mission: Impossible movie was released 22 years and two months after the first one — say what you will about this franchise, they're not crankin' 'em out like sausages. There's always a gap of at least three years between entries, as that's how long it takes a new Tom Cruise clone to...

Against all odds, the spy-thriller-with-bonkers-stunts-and-goofy-disguises-starring-a-guy-from-Top-Gun-and-based-on-a-1960s-TV-show industry is booming. Six Mission: Impossibles deep and Tom Cruise doesn’t have much will to live left to lose. It’s no minor miracle that his obsessive devotion to...

After the unexpected success of Star Wars in 1977, studios rushed to recreate the film and its massive popularity. This saw a huge spate of ripoffs like Starcrash, Battle Beyond the Stars, and one of the most wildly inventive, strange, and beautiful films ever made: Toei Studios' Message from...