The gay subculture of early Hollywood has gained more attention recently thanks to the Netflix series Hollywood. While the show does feature portrayals of some real celebrity characters, its main focus is on the fictional minority characters and the made-up success story of their diverse film. Many stars in Hollywood from the 1930s suppressed their…
Welcome to 4:3 & Forgotten — a weekly column in which Kieran Fisher and I get to look back at TV terrors that scared adults (and the kids they let watch) across the limited airwaves of the ’70s. Horror has a definition, and you should probably go Google it to see what it is. That said, it’s also something…
Welcome to Horrorscope, a monthly column keeping horror nerds and initiates up to date on all the genre content coming to and leaving from your favorite streaming services. There’s an episode of The Twilight Zone where a bookish bank teller accidentally becomes the last man on earth. And sure, it stinks that the human race has…
There’s no denying that we are in strange times, and that’s no more evident than in the fact that when I say “we” I’m referring to people all over the world enduring the same situation simultaneously. There’s safety in staying at home, now more than ever, but for many of us that means wiling away…
I spend a lot of time worrying that Better Things will hurt me. Pamela Adlon’s fantastic FX series, which just finished its fourth season, is by no means pain-free. The life-inspired series about a single mother raising three daughters (or possibly two daughters and a gender-nonconforming kid) has its share of emotional bumps and bruises,…
When a piece of art, or an artist, profoundly infects your being, altering the course of your life through a cataclysmic shattering of your accepted world order, you are compelled to share that experience with others. Think back to the first time you saw Night of the Living Dead, or Dawn of the Dead, or…
Welcome to Filmographies, a biweekly column for completists. Every edition brings a new actor’s resumé into focus as we learn about what makes them so compelling. Chris Evans is a touchstone of American pop culture. Twenty years ago, he emerged in Hollywood during what now feels like a completely different era of popular moviemaking. His…
I’m lying down now. I’m looking at the hole you made in the ceiling. In 1998, a French production house launched an international cinematic project, commissioning filmmakers from ten different countries to envision the impending turn of the millennium. The endeavor was called 2000, Seen By…, and its standout was a 95-minute film from Taiwanese filmmaker…
After years of fans being teased about the possibility, a sequel to the 1993 sci-fi action comedy Demolition Man may finally be coming to fruition, according to original star Sylvester Stallone. He just told his Instagram followers: “I think it is coming. We’re working on it right now with Warner Brothers, and it’s looking fantastic,…
This essay is part of our series Episodes, a bi-weekly column in which senior contributor Valerie Ettenhofer digs into the singular chapters of television that make the medium great. Each person who watches the Atlanta episode “Teddy Perkins” has a different what-the-fuck threshold, a point at which the sheer ambitious absurdity of the entry becomes crystallized in our minds…
Welcome to this week in home video! Pick of the Week Better Days What is it? A bullied girl and a thuggish boy fall in love. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWhy see it? This heavy, suspenseful drama won’t leave you unscathed, and it’s unsurprising to learn that it recently swept the…
The list of new arrivals to Shudder for April 2020 is below, but first, I’m going to celebrate five films currently available on the world’s best horror streaming service. I’ve previously highlighted some great horror/comedies there as well some some fun horror flicks from the 80s, but sometimes it’s not laughs and zaniness you want….
Welcome to the first installment of Franchising the Score, a column that will explore countless musical scores from all of your favorite movie franchises. But we’ll start with maybe the most famous of all, so strap yourself in while we make the jump to hyperspace and travel back a long time ago to a galaxy…
Old Hollywood is rewritten in Ryan Murphy‘s latest endeavor, which employs a group of minority underdogs for a fictional success story set in 1940s Los Angeles. The Netflix limited series Hollywood follows a gay African-American screenwriter (Jeremy Pope), an Asian director (Darren Criss), and an African-American actress (Laura Harrier) as they work on a movie that aims…
Welcome to 4:3 & Forgotten — a weekly column in which Rob Hunter and I get to look back at TV terrors that scared adults (and the kids they let watch) across the limited airwaves of the ’70s. Movies about Satanic cults and witch covens tend to adhere to the same familiar beats. That’s especially true for the films…
Welcome to The Prime Sublime, a weekly column dedicated to the underseen and underloved films buried beneath page after page of far more popular fare on Amazon’s Prime Video collection. We’re not just cherry-picking obscure titles, though, as these are movies that we find beautiful in their own, often unique ways. You might even say we…
Amazon Prime Video is the only streaming service with a cost that also gets you free shipping, and that my friends is a deal. They’re in the original programming game, but their biggest offering remains the ton of films available to watch anytime for Prime members. The complete list of titles hitting Amazon Prime this month…
Ryan Murphy‘s Hollywood is an alternate history of Tinseltown in its Golden Age, a fantasy narrative in which the underdogs and the minorities win the respect they never got in our own timeline. Now we are able to relive the glamour of the 1940s while watching a wildly different story than we’re used to. The worldbuilding…
Steven Spielberg‘s Indiana Jones films are, quite simply, some of the most beloved action movies ever committed to celluloid. The franchise acts as a four-film highlight reel of every pre-show Saturday serial ever made, in other words: it’s just plain fun. Photography on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984),…
Hulu has been stuck in the third-place position when it comes to movie streaming behind Netflix and Amazon Prime because most people still see them strictly as a home for next-day television. They have movies too, though, and more than a few of them are gems that make Hulu a destination beyond last night’s TV…
Welcome to this week in home video! Pick of the Week Butt Boy What is it? A hard detective investigates the abduction of a young boy. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWhy see it? Here’s the thing. This is a sincere film about a cop with issues chasing a killer with a…