This is the second part of a three-part series. The first part, where I talk about the superhero genre’s place among other quintessentially American film genres, is here. The Best of the Fourth Genre What I was going to do here, in the interests of giving you the wisdom of crowds and critics, was one… Read More The Fourth Genre: The Best Superhero Movies
The Fourth Genre (Just in Case You’re from Space and Haven’t Seen The Avengers) Before I watched a bunch of DC animated movies, I watched A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. In that doc, Scorsese says there are three American genres, genres which sprung up in their fullest forms in American movies:… Read More The Fourth American Genre: The Superhero Movie
Recently, I was inspired by the unveiling of the Variety list of the 100 best horror movies. I was curious why the list had been received with trepidation. To sum up the post, my conclusion was that Variety included a number of older movies which rely more on atmosphere than gore or jump scares, and… Read More Which Movies Make Up the Horror Canon?
For those of you coming to the discourse a little late, let’s summarize some of the little reasons why people got mad at the Variety list. (The list was put together by Siddhant Adlakha, Peter Debruge, William Earl, Owen Gleiberman, Courtney Howard, Tomris Laffly, Amy Nicholson, and Rene Rodriguez. I wish that they, as Slant… Read More The Variety 100 Best Horror Movies – Whose Horror Is It Anyway?
Dir. Marc Webb. Starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx Every movie adaptation of the Batman story has to cope with the Joker in the same way that whenever Poochie’s not on screen, the other characters should be asking, “Where’s Poochie?” “The Night Gwen Stacy Died” doesn’t cast quite as long a shadow as Poochie… Read More The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
Dir. Fred Zinnemann. Starring Shirley Jones, Gordan MacRae, Charlotte Greenwood The year is 1955, the year of Kismet and Rebel without a Cause. The black-and-white musical is dead. The model of 42nd Street is crumbling around the feet of The Band Wagon. The three M’s (that’s “Method,” “Meisner,” and “Miller”) are coming to symbolize the… Read More Oklahoma! (1955)
From @JFrankensteiner, one of the leading lights of Film Twitter, the guy who popularized “Jimmy Carter: Letterboxd President.” This has over six million views on Twitter and more than 100,000 likes. Is it hyperbole? Is this, in fact, the worst filmography you’re liable to see in your life? As ever, I am still just one… Read More Who Has the Worst Filmography of All Time?
Dir. Richard Thorpe. Starring Esther Williams, Jimmy Durante, Peter Lawford It’s not a hard and fast rule. Exceptions include movies like Blazing Saddles, the Monty Python films, Once Upon a Time in America. But when I see four separate writers credited for a screenplay I get nervous. It’s romantic to think that when only one… Read More On an Island with You (1948)
Dir. Jonathan Glazer. Starring Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller, Julia Polaczak The United Kingdom took home its first ever victory in the International Feature Film category at the Oscars, the third nominee for a country which had sent two Welsh-language nominees up in the ’90s. This movie is in German, which is unusual, to say the… Read More The Zone of Interest (2023)
My new hobby is Marvel United, and if you’re here, you either a) don’t need me to explain this game to you or b) you’re liable to read whatever I write anyway, bless you. Since it’s a new hobby, it’s got a huge slice of my brain. In the spirit of Marvel stuff: A few… Read More Marvel United Season 1 and 2 (and Spider-Geddon!) Character Rankings
Seeing Things Secondhand 