Games and Thrones
The real history of the era portrayed in Gladiator II is much more interesting, tumultuous, and murderous than Scott’s simpleminded yarn.
Charlotte Allen
· 13 min read
Cinema
A collection of 100 posts
Savage Entertainment
A new version of Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione’s notorious 1979 film ‘Caligula’ provides a valuable record of one of the most fascinating disasters in cinema history.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 30 min read
Megalopolis: Bloated, Outré—and Brilliant
Like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, it’s chaos alright—but it’s a dazzling chaos.
Ralph Leonard
· 8 min read
All Hail the New Flesh
For all its decorative asides about predatory male sexuality, ‘The Substance’ is most coherently understood as a morality tale about the folly of feminist illusions.
Charlotte Allen
· 11 min read
Sonny Side Up
Al Pacino’s personal life has been a bit of a train wreck, but his new memoir leaves no doubt that acting has been the most important thing in his life.
Kevin Mims
· 21 min read
A Joke Too Far?
Todd Phillips’s unfairly reviled sequel raises interesting questions about the artistic licence auteurs take with well-known properties.
Allan Stratton
· 11 min read
Blonde on Blonde
Andrew Dominik’s much-maligned film about the life and death of a screen icon claws through the sentimental myth-making in search of terrible truths.
Charlotte Allen
· 32 min read
Tales of Creation and Adaptation
The journey of two novels from mind to page to silver screen.
Allan Stratton
· 22 min read
A Filmmaker in Spite of Himself
Sacha Guitry disdained cinema as an art form, but with a slew of recent Blu-ray releases, his acidic comedies are finally receiving the attention they deserve.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 22 min read
Killing for a Quiet Life
John Krasinski’s dystopian horror trilogy imagines a biblical plague visited on the din of modernity.
Thomas Larson
· 7 min read
Roman Polanski’s ‘Chinatown’ Fifty Years On
Chinatown is noir at its bleakest, yet most stylish.
Ralph Leonard
· 9 min read
Texas Porn Star Massacres
Ti West’s clever and original ‘X’ trilogy is elevated postmodern horror at its finest and its director’s best work to date.
Allan Stratton
· 12 min read
Blood, Sweat, and Gasoline
The story of Hollywood’s most unlikely blockbuster franchise, Mad Max.
Allan Stratton
· 21 min read
A History of Stunts
Ryan Gosling’s new film is a love letter to an under-appreciated art.
Allan Stratton
· 9 min read
American Carnage
Alex Garland’s spectacular new film ‘Civil War’ is a warning of what can happen to democracies when civil society collapses.
Allan Stratton
· 7 min read