Roger Ebert’s review introduces Detour perfectly: Edgar Ulmer’s Detour is a cult classic. It’s a B movie. It’s a film noir. It’s the film noir with (one of) the highest profit margins of them all. From the start, Detour has been surrounded by unreliable stories. Ulmer said he filmed it within a week on a… Read More Detour (1945), Why Al Roberts is not an Unreliable Narrator
Alex Garland’s Men opens with Harper who wants to get a divorce from James. James threatens to kill himself if she goes through with it. They get into an argument, he hits her, she throws him out and minutes later she sees him fall down through her window fall. Their eyes lock for a moment.… Read More Why Men (2022) is About Men Embodying Femininity
One article describes Ti West’s movie X as a hard movie to watch for anyone with a female body, another spoke of yet another portrayal of older women’s naked bodies as a source of fear and repulsion and more than once I read that X‘s geriatric villains are its weakest link. Dated horror tropes that… Read More ‘X’ (2022) versus the Male Gaze and Seventies’ Feminism
A star cast, a big budget, and a very willing audience member because I was excited to enjoy some old fashioned entertainment after what seemed like an endless stream of gloomy scenario’s and lockdowns. I was ready to be taken away on a cruise on the Nile with Hercule Poirot as my guide and I… Read More Death on the Nile (2022, 1937), or Death of a Detective
The dance scene in Garland’s Ex Machina is the most interesting scene in the movie and the best portrayal of Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic in centuries. Definitely the best one on a disco beat. At first sight Ex Machina is about what makes an AI self conscious. Caleb, a young programmer, works for Bluebook (a Google-type… Read More Why the Dance Scene in Ex Machina (2015) Is More Philosophical Than You Think
In the accompanying clips of the movie Maria Schrader, director of I am Your Man, giggles when it comes to the male protagonist Robot Tom. He is good looking, she says. A clip of the lead actress shows the same happy smile. And he looks good, she beams. Schrader says the movie is basically a… Read More Ich bin Dein Mensch / I am Your Man (2021), What a Male Robot Shows About Love
Villeneuve’s Dune, opening night and I was there, in a seat exactly in the middle of the screen (I love that). Still, I wasn’t too excited because I expected to be deeply disappointed but – of course – I had to see Dune anyway. However, Dune took me by surprise and Villeneuve’s portrayal of the… Read More Dune’s Bene Gesserit, Three Visual Portrayals Compared
Obliviously I walked into an exhibition of Shigeru Onishi (1928-1994), and only after a couple of pictures my heart started to beat faster. This was exciting. This was about time. This was time travel as a real experience, right here, right now! Who was this photographer? What is his work all about? I bounced back… Read More [Art] Shigeru Onishi, Photographs Igniting a Science Fiction Experience
Acceptance, Calm, Peace in handwritten letters on the door, surrounded by three white hearts. This is it. How did Alice talk me into this? I don’t like yoga. I don’t like people in tight overpriced clothes. I don’t like preaching about mindfulness and the lessons of the universe, so I can be the best version… Read More Yoga Class, a short horror story
The physical body – its desired appearance, how you care for it, what it needs, the stages it has to go through in life, the pains it should or should not endure, the amount of exercise and sleep it needs – is an expression of social cultural categories, according to anthropologists Marcel Mauss and Mary… Read More Titane (2021), Why it’s not Queer, but the Horrific Reversal of a Romantic Comedy
Elenit, by Euripides Laskaridis // Osmosis, promised architectural modes of light and space, creative costumes, and to be a ‘comedy of the absurd’. This lured me into buying a ticket. It did not disappoint on all these points, but something else happened: I was a lot more touched by this absurd comedy dance theatre than… Read More [Modern Dance] Elenit (2019), Community in a Fantastic Absurd
The key fit. She opened the door of her new apartment and ran through the rooms. The high ceilings, the tall windows, the original wooden floors, the elegant spaciousness. She loved it. She loved old buildings. Close to the park, close to the center. All hers. All hers! Who would have thought? Finally, the universe… Read More Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, a short horror story
Stephen King was pleased to find out about Stanley Kubrick’ plans to adapt The Shining. But this happiness was short-lived: King thoroughly disliked Kubrick’s film and hasn’t stopped since to express his intense disapproval. King: “He’s kind of a dyspeptic filmmaker, a Type A filmmaker, worrying and wanting to edit right up to the end.… Read More The Shining: King versus Kubrick on Horror
The Invisible Man is a science fiction novel from 1897, written by H. G. Wells, and since then it has turned into movies and television shows multiple times, including spin-offs and sequels. What changed between the first and the last movie? Both are tales of a mad scientist, but the same story has sparked different… Read More The Invisible Man (1933) versus (2020), Horrific Changes in Science and Love
‘So,’ Ella said as she slowly licked the last foam of her cappuccino from the spoon. ‘You can’t come tonight to the party because once again you are going to your dad in his tomb.’ Outside everything is bathed in dark gray, but she glows golden in the lights of the coffee place. It made… Read More Image, a short horror story
Fantastic Focus 