Comics, like movies, are texts ripe for deconstruction. Animators and writers deliberately plot their stories for audience entertainment, while simultaneously commenting on the world around us. The power of the comic book is so strong that in 1954 a United States Senate Subcommittee convened to inquire as to whether (among other things) Batman and Robin’s
Liked ‘Logan’? Watch These
Logan, directed by James Mangold, is the third film in the Wolverine trilogy (if you can call it that), the tenth film in Fox’s X-Men series, and a departure from the other films in the X-franchise. Not just because it’s rated R, either. This one is very much a classic genre film, with Wolverine playing
Review: ‘Logan’ Is a Slash to the Skull, in a Good Way
Logan is the third standalone film for Hugh Jackman’s knife-fisted X-Men maverick Wolverine, completing the weary trilogy with something fans have long waited to see: Wolverine’s adamantium claws slashing through human skulls like they were piñatas. Yes, we’re in hard-R territory here, with Mr. Logan (and others) doing fatal, bloody damage to numerous people, swearing
Zodiac Killer Movies: A Brief History
There’s a scene about two-thirds into David Fincher’s Zodiac in which David Toschi, the San Francisco homicide detective played by Mark Ruffalo, walks out of a screening of Dirty Harry in disgust, bemoaning the fact that he hasn’t solved the Zodiac case and “they’re already making movies about it.” (A colleague even jokes that “Harry
Baseball and Sisyphus: Repetition Brings Focus and Purpose
Richard Linklater’s latest movie Everybody Wants Some!! follows the lives of college baseball players over a weekend in 1980, as they attempt to define themselves en route to adulthood. In one pivotal scene, Jake, a freshman pitcher, talks about his college admission essay, which compares baseball to Sisyphus from Greek mythology. What follows is that
8 Title Characters Ranked by How Unlikely You’d Be to Invite Them Home to Meet Your Parents
20th Century Fox’s Logan hits theaters this week, and while it’s by all accounts a fantastic film the aspect of it I’m most interested in right this second is its entry onto the list of movies named after one of their characters. There are tens of thousands of titles that feature a character’s name —
U.S. History in Film Part 1: 1492-1908
George Santayana isn’t a household name, but something he said is one of the best-known quotations in human history: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As a bit of a history buff, I’m a big fan of that quote, and I think it is, for the most part, very true. If
Revisiting ‘Memoirs of an Invisible Man’ on Its 25th Anniversary
Memoirs of an Invisible Man sounds like a lazy joke in a comedy about 1985 Hollywood. A nameless executive is airing his daily grievances to an even more nameless assistant. Remind me to get John Carpenter and Chevy Chase on the phone about that invisible man picture — if the effects guys can’t make Chevy’s
Review: ‘Collide’ Offers Mildly Ludicrous Action and Hammy Villains
There is a certain movie formula where an ordinary man must do something illegal and dangerous (usually to save a loved one), but the task goes awry and he spends the next 24 hours running from bad guys (usually drug traffickers), becoming increasingly battered from all the auto wrecks and leaps from rooftops before finally
Review: Jordan Peele’s Sharp Horror-Comedy ‘Get Out’
A movie about an African-American boyfriend visiting his white girlfriend’s family home sounds like a hackneyed drama about race relations in America. But Get Out is no Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? The movie twists the cliched setup into a sharp horror-comedy … that is also an allegory about race relations in America. You know