|Chelli Riddiough| The Terminator isn’t a very horny film, unless you’re into feathered mullets and homicidal Austrians. But inside this ‘80s action thriller lives a love story, and not one, but two, very weird sex scenes. That’s enough to catapult it into a genre I call “cyberspunk.” When The Terminator begins, our protagonist… Continue reading
|Brogan Earney| If you’re like me and you grew up in Minnesota in the 90s or early 2000s, then we can all agree that Gordon Bombay was the shit. I first saw the Mighty Ducks films when I was 6 years old, and I quickly latched onto the character and looked up to his methodology, and I wasn’t even a hockey player. Over time, I realized that… Continue reading
|Zach Staads| If you really want to make a statement, affect some real change and be an upstanding, ambitious member of the bureaucratic body that keeps the lights on*—you should know the importance of bureau fashion and the importance it plays in… Continue reading
| Ben Jarman | Nobody is surprised when it happens; it’s been coming for a long time, before written history. One argument turns into conflict after conflict. Sometimes the conflicts bring us to the brink, but never over the edge. The scholars warn and the media antagonize… Continue reading
| Doug Carmody | Threads opens to a world on the brink. But despite a sky disrupted by thundering jet planes and a radio warning of escalating tensions between NATO and Iran, the opening scene shows two young lovers, Ruth and Jimmy, trying to have a nice time on a date. The next scene… Continue reading
|Lucas Vonasek| Fascism can take many forms. Throughout books and movies, it is often portrayed as overt and obvious villainy where injustice drips from the pronounced canines of the antagonist. Other times, fascism can be seen as a devilishly debonair individual smoothly… Continue reading
|Chris Polley| “The neighborhood hasn’t really changed that much,” NYPD Detective William McQueen said to The New York Times in 1979 for a story about record-breaking violent crime in the Big Apple. He added, “Homicides seem to be the thing we have the least control over. Burglaries… Continue reading
|Veda Lawrence| Our unsuspecting man will be minding his own business, drinking a lackluster old fashioned at the bar, reading a book, likely taking a day off of his more literary endeavors and winding down with some fluff, perhaps Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or some other light, beachy read. Just then, his peace will be disturbed… Continue reading
|Timothy Zila| There’s a knock on the door or a ringing phone or, quite often, a stranger waiting in the detective’s office. The noir protagonist doesn’t seek trouble out; trouble seeks him. So it goes in Chinatown and The Maltese Falcon. And so it goes, too, in Blade Runner. When we meet Deckard… Continue reading
|Ryan Sanderson| One could argue that every Terry Gilliam film is a magnum opus—Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, even Lost in La Mancha feels like a definitive statement about human nature in which Gilliam serves as… Continue reading
|Timothy Zila| When we meet Sam Lowry, the protagonist of Brazil, he’s flying. High above the clouds, clothed in a plastic-looking breast piece borrowed from a cosplayer’s wardrobe and feathery wings fit for a campy theater production. There is no clear purpose in his flight— Continue reading
|MH Rowe| Is WALL-E (2008), the dystopian frolic of a film celebrated for its cleverly desolated planet Earth, its jokes aimed at adults, and its lonely robot protagonist, really a movie for kids? Of course it is. There’s the all-ages slapstick for one thing. Our titular hero, WALL-E, has a job… Continue reading
|Justin Ayd| In a grim, not-so-distant future in which the world’s population has suffered generations of infertility, a former activist reluctantly agrees to transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea. Looking back on humanity’s long and broad history… Continue reading
