Vague Visages Short Stories: iamdifid: by D.M. Palmer
Vague Visages Short Stories #13: iamdifid: by D.M. Palmer (Sheffield, UK)
We Are Our Media: ‘Assassination Nation’ and Pop Art Society
“Part of me expects something as grandiose as ‘Assassination Nation’ to happen in real life, and that’s what’s especially terrifying.”
‘Glass’ Is a Superhero Movie for People Who Like Analyzing Superhero Movies
“Where DC trades in grim realism and Marvel does the whole snarky, joke-a-minute thing, the Shyamalanverse is a flavor all its own, a world where superheroes exist, but they don’t wear capes and their lives are usually pretty awful.”
Multiple Maniacs: ‘Split’ and the Uncanny
“Despite sharing a universe with ‘Unbreakable,’ M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Split’ fits into a deeper cinematic legacy of psychosexual horror, one that speaks to our sense of the uncanny…”
Netflix’s ‘Close’ Succeeds in Crafting Authentic Female Characters
“The vibrant and explosive opening credits sequence sets the tone for an action-packed story that truly feels real and allows women to feel empowered.”
‘The Village’: A Slow Burner Fueled by Power Lies
“‘The Village’ is indeed a fantastic movie, and one that deserves more credit. That is the twist that actually matters.”
The Fear of Losing Faith: On M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Signs’
“Yes, the alien scenes in ‘Signs’ remain startling and scary 17 years later, but it’s the film’s depiction of what happens to people who lose faith that truly resonates and terrifies.”
Life Past Proof: Negotiating Visibility in ‘The Hate U Give’ and BFI London’s Experimenta Films
“In different ways, these BFI London films experiment with visibility, elucidating the struggle, but also suggesting alternative strategies to achieve freedom, and to live past ‘proof.’”
‘Unbreakable’ and the Horror of Superheroes
“As a recurring visual motif in ‘Unbreakable’ illustrates, sometimes all it takes to do something new is by turning things upside down and gaining a different perspective.”
‘On the Basis of Sex’: Mimi Leder Looks at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Early Work
“The biopic-wary should applaud ‘On the Basis of Sex’ for its avoidance of the temptation to cover a longer chronology of Bader Ginsburg’s life and career.”
No Comfort Zone: An Interview with ‘Cold War’ Star Joanna Kulig
Marshall Shaffer Interviews ‘Cold War’ Star Joanna Kulig
Building Stories: An Interview with Director, Screenwriter and Playwright Kenneth Lonergan
Pablo Staricco Cadenazzi Interviews Kenneth Lonergan
Review: Peter Jackson’s ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’
“‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ is such an apt title because the experiences of these soldiers are made entirely immediate, through both technical and narrative care. Peter Jackson reaches into the past and immortalizes those lives through film.”
Review: Josie Rourke’s ‘Mary Queen of Scots’
“Dramatic license is so much a given that discussions of authenticity are as damned as they are damning.”
Looking Back at 2018: In Praise of Carla Simón’s ‘Summer 1993’
“This is a cinematic autobiography that feels both grounded in personal history and expanded upon and imagined.”
A Bright Shadow: The Color Red in Nicolas Roeg’s ‘Don’t Look Now’
“Red as warning, as love, as danger, as violence, as prophecy, as passion, as occult mystery: all of these and more are conveyed in the director’s use of the color throughout this story of loss, grief and obsession.”
What Makes a Man: Wounded Masculinity in William Lustig’s ‘Maniac’ Cycle
“In its own histrionic way, the ‘Maniac’ cycle presages a wave of reaction that would draw its power from the patriarchal fear of dispossession.”
Choose Your Own Bleak Adventure in ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’
“To use a gaming term, it’s got replay value, but it might leave those looking for a cohesive, more-traditional narrative choosing a different path.”
‘Vox Lux,’ 21st Century Trauma and Healing Through Pop Culture
“In ‘Vox Lux,’ pop music is an emblem of pop culture and the distractions we use to soften the growing trauma of the nation. It also plays into the main question that Corbet raises: just how long can we cling onto pop culture before society gets so bad that nothing will help?”
‘Collateral Beauty’: The Sinister Holiday Fable We Deserve
“This truly does feel like a religious fable farmed out via an automated word generator, one funded by corporate studio execs and programmed by Madison Avenue hacks and Instagram influencers.”