Movie Review

by Joe Shelton                 Justice League resembles nothing so much as a less scary, more confusing Frankenstein’s monster. Only rather than an arm here and a leg there, it is put together out of bits and pieces left over from a survey of the last twenty years of big budget Hollywood.                 Far from the…

by Joseph Shelton                 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene is one of those film documentaries, like Room 237 or philosopher Slavov Zizek’s Pervert’s Guide to Cinema movies, that takes an wide view of a relatively narrow subject. In this case, the movie explores the iconic sequence in which Janet Leigh is murdered by Anthony Perkins as Norman…

by Joseph Shelton                 The best comedy on tv, which places it fairly high in the running for best show of any kind, is about a sad man who lives in Bakersfield, California, though he’d rather be in France. He’s married to a woman who told him she’ll never love him. He’s lost and he…

by Joseph Shelton                  Thank God for little blessings, like the laughter of children, the smell of rain, and independent sci-fi and horror films. Let everyone else have their The Greatest Showman (out now on DVD and Blu-Ray at Movie Lovers!) and their Avengers. I’m happy with my The Beast of Yucca Flat, or Yor:…

by Joseph Shelton                 Watching certain movies reminds us why we should read more books.                 Pop quiz, hotshot: what 2018 film, the tenth in its series, not only has a bevy of references to Charles Dickens’ The Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities, Terry Gilliams’ masterpiece Brazil (your humble correspondent’s favorite movie),…

By Joe Shelton      The original Blade Runner is at once a fascinating failure and an accomplishment.  In its original theatrical release it was a consummate mess, an LA noir as filtered through German expressionism — part nostalgia for a hellish future (in the impossibly distant year of 2019, no less), part meditation on…

by Joseph Shelton                 Remember when they still made action movies that weren’t all so high concept (and budget)? That is to say, remember the action thrillers they made before the only bankable genre in Hollywood was superhero schlock? Before the endless clash of giant robots, aliens and superhumans drowned out all of the subtler, slightly…

BRIGSBY BEAR TELLS A MUDDLED STORY OF FANDOM, KIDNAPPING, AND MUSH. By Joseph Shelton 11/15/17 If you’re as nerdy as me, and I pray you are, then you already know how your favorite TV show or movie can become sort of, well, more real than real.   For me it was Star Wars, the specifics of which…

By Joe Shelton 10/27/17 In a Year of Stephen King adaptations, “The Dark Tower” Disappoints As the many-headed serpent that is Hollywood casts around in the shallows for something to make us buy, it will more often than not present us with something we’ve already seen before, something familiar.  And nowadays there’s nothing so comfortably…