In his 1978 book Orientalism, historian and cultural critic Edward Said writes: “Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order…
Observed through a crystalline lens of deadpan gentility, Whit Stillman’s charming 1990 comedy of manners, Metropolitan, is a timeless tale of a bygone era. Stillman paints a world where teenagers catch trains in tuxedos and opine unironically about the merits of local versus international…
No question, the ‘90s were a turbulent time for superhero movies: the Superman franchise had long been dormant, put in limbo thanks to producer malfeasance and increasingly awful sequels; ditto the Batman films, with the one-two punch of the puke-colored, day-glo, pop-culture-punchline-featuring Batman Forever…
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Brad Peyton’s San Andreas is little more than an excuse for elaborate CG destruction and cliched narrative bullet points. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson must repair his fractured marriage and rescue his teen daughter in the midst of an apocalyptic natural cataclysm…that’s…
With a title sequence that references both Stan Brakhage and To Kill a Mockingbird, David Fincher’s Se7en announces itself as a decidedly progressive genre text. Throughout his career, but particularly in this early masterwork, Fincher’s consumed the fleeting styles of Hollywood and mainstream film — in this case, film noir — and…
