Horror films often revolve around fears and desires, generally with dire consequences for anti-social or blasphemous beliefs. As a genre, they reinforce community standards and behavioral norms, which is one reason that audiences perpetually ask “what did they do to deserve this?” when someone is possessed, haunted, or otherwise experiences evil. With a sort of evil spirit realm paralleling our own, sometimes all it takes is opening the wrong door, unsealing that basement cupboard, even…Read More

New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams created The Addams Family, a delightfully weird and wacky family of macabre cartoon characters, back in the late 1930s. He continued offering up strange and darkly humorous cartoons of his popular clan until his death in the 1980s. The Addams family was a surprise hit, inspiring a live-action TV series in the 1960s, another live-action series in the 70s, two live-action movies in the 90s, an animated series in the…Read More

Based on a series of thrillers written by former spy Ian Fleming, there’s no more successful film franchise than that of James Bond. The master spy of the British MI6 service with the license to kill denoted by his double-oh identifier – 007 – he’s long been the epitome of Western masculine cultural values. The franchise has also had its ups and downs with Sean Connery, Roger More, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and, for one…Read More

It’s millions of years in the future and the Galactic Empire spans hundreds of planets and trillions of people. It’s been surprisingly calm and stable for thousands of years, but psychohistorian Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) is convinced that something terrible is about to happen. Seldon, a mathematician, has invented the science of psychohistory, an amalgamation of psychology and statistics that allows him to analyze humankind across eons to predict future events, both large and small….Read More

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is enormous, encompassing dozens of superheroes and hundreds of characters, all tied together through vague and mysterious organizations like SHIELD or Hydra. SHIELD was created when boss-man Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) realized how fragile our world was to outside threats, then a subset of them created The Avengers. That covers about twenty movies and a couple of TV series, I think. But Marvel has had other secret organizations throughout its…Read More

It might be because Halloween is coming up, but there are a lot of horror films hitting the streams and theaters right now. Some of them I can’t make it through, but others turn out to be sleepers, really good movies that demonstrate a terrific verve and sense of style. The indie horror film Come True is in the latter category and proves a good, creepy watch. It’s the kind of oppressive horror film that’s…Read More

The idea that we might have already experienced a moment, an event, or an entire day is endlessly fascinating for filmmakers, Most obviously, the wry Groundhog Day (1993) starring the inimitable Bill Murray in one of his most famous roles. The Matrix (1999) dabbles with time loops ingeniously in its explanation of déjà vu. Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt offer a high-tension iterating day in the terrific, albeit poorly named sci-fi actioner Edge of Tomorrow (2014)….Read More