Album Review: Arca ‘KiCk i’
“Taken as a whole, ‘KiCk i’ is a delirious tour-de-force, a compilation of experiments that don’t fully cohere but still build up to an intriguing final image.”
From ‘Sex’ to ‘Girls’ to ‘Insecure’: HBO’s Feminist and Intersectional Chronicle
“HBO has come a long way in representing the intersectionality of race and gender.”
Why Criticism: Against Nostalgia
“More than ever, it is crucial to contemplate what this nostalgia phenomenon means for the future of the arts and our discomfort with the new. Will there be a ‘new’ in the new world?”
Review: Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’
“One of the most effective storytelling strategies in Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’ is the application of the simple and elegant dichotomy.”
Putting the Record Straight: In Conversation with 70s Rock Icon Suzi Quatro
“Right now, I’ve never felt more creative.” – Rhys Handley Interviews 70s Rock Icon Suzi Quatro About Her Career and the 2020 Documentary ‘Suzi Q’
Why Criticism: Dismantling the Boys’ Club in Horror
“The main reason I write about horror movies, aside from having a deep and abiding love for them, is that I have a perspective unique to me. But, for certain men, that’s not enough.”
Local Heroes: Ben Flanagan on Odeon Chelmsford
“Local Heroes” is a Vague Visages column dedicated to movie theater memories and the theatrical experience.
The Code Complex: Robert De Niro, Jake LaMotta and ‘Raging Bull’
“‘Raging Bull’ — a complex character study about methods and codes of conduct — all too often gets reductively tagged as Martin’s Scorsese’s toxic masculinity sports movie that allowed Robert De Niro to lose (and gain) weight in pursuit of an Oscar.”
Martin Scorsese, ‘Mean Streets’ and Caravaggio’s Moment of Illumination
“In Caravaggio and Scorsese’s art, the silent actions of male and female characters speak louder than words. We don’t need to hear Holofernes scream to understand what Judith has taken.”
Album Review: Phoebe Bridgers ‘Punisher’
“Bridgers, like all her millennial contemporaries, contains multitudes as yet unseen. She is living any number of lives all at once — but, at the core of it all, there’s still a vulnerable child of the 90s adrift in a merciless world…”