Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982) is a holiday film that fits every season. It captures so much about the highs and lows, and the beginnings and endings that we will all experience in our lives. Like the flowing water that is pictured at the start of...

This year has been a journey of discovery for me with African cinema. Our Patreon listeners may remember that one of my resolutions this year was to become better acquainted with African films. To that end,

Sometimes a film leaves an indelible impression on you because its ending is so buoyant that you feel uplifted, lighter than air. The Heiress (Wyler, 1949) leaves a bruise on your heart, and it is because the ending is so irrevocably painful and bitter...

It’s that most wonderful time of the year again! In this episode, The Magic Jack O’Lantern 2019, we once again bring you our list of viewing tricks and treats to celebrate the season. We watched one Halloween inspired title every day in October and now...

When I selected Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (Hancock, 1971) as my Cole-o-ween choice for this year, I didn’t intend it as a response to Ericca’s choice. Nor was I trying to establish any sort of “women on the verge” theme.

Jennifer Kent, the writer and director of The Babadook (2014), crafted the story of an exhausted widowed mother and her demanding 6 year-old into a psychological horror film about facing up to the darkness within ourselves.

Film noir simply doesn’t get darker than Fernando Ayala’s Los Tallos Amargos (1956). And when I say dark, I mean classical tragedy dark. Dostoevsky levels of wretched darkness. I have never seen a noir quite like this.

Are you still afraid to go into the water? Does the specter of a killer shark still haunt you, 44 years after that monster first broke the water’s surface in Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)? It absolutely haunts me,

Upon my first viewing of it, Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution (2015) leapt to the top of the list of my favorite movies of this decade, perhaps of any decade. It’s a deft intermingling of modern body horror and much more ancient fears.

Anna Rose Holmer’s The Fits (2015) doesn’t reveal all its secrets. We as viewers don’t know the origin of the mysterious fits that one-by-one overtake the girls of the dance team any more than they do. That these fits seem to come with some greater und...