how black lives have not mattered
Movies for understanding racism and white supremacy in America. [A teaser of an essay for Patreon patrons and Substack subscribers only.]
Month: April 2021
my picks for tonight’s 93rd Academy Awards (the Oscars for 2020’s films) (winners indicated)
I correctly guessed 11 out of the 24 23 categories, which is slightly better than last year.
Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts 2021 (93rd Academy Awards) review
The brilliantly unsettling “Two Distant Strangers” is not only the most important of the nominees but one of the movies of the year, of any length. Its surprises are more brutal than mere plot twists.
Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts 2021 (93rd Academy Awards) review
“Hunger Ward,” an unvarnished vérité look at starving Yemeni children and the medics trying to save them, best encapsulates the human experience of pain and resilience that all the nominees embody.
One Night in Miami… movie review: the past, still prologue
An electrifying philosophical fantasia that imagines four towering figures of 1960s America arguing over how to navigate racism as Black men. Enraging, but also thrilling, bursting with cinematic joy.
Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts 2021 (93rd Academy Awards) review
I don’t see how the astonishing “Opera,” by Erick Oh, doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Animated Short. This is a stupendous achievement, a cartoon clockwork depicting life, the universe, and everything.
The Tunnel (Tunnelen) movie review: fire in the mountain
As stuffed with soap-opera clichés as its cinematic precursors, but this is nevertheless a solid and diverting rescue procedural… and it’s somehow even more shocking for how mundane its disaster is.
Synchronic movie review: Benson and Moorhead would have voted for Obama twice if they could have…
Just because a tale is science fiction doesn’t mean that plausibility and cohesion are not required. Yet we can see the narrative strings pulling along the puppet-characters, and in an ugly direction.
‘Cultural Artifacts’ out now! (about the cover, plus a giveaway)
Yay! It’s pub day for my collection of science fiction, fantasy, and horror flash fiction.
hidden gems from Amazon Prime, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and Hulu
Passion, creativity, and suspense in stillness… [A teaser of an essay for Patreon patrons and Substack subscribers only.]
