If you’re into Southern Gothic literature, you’ll go nuts over Mark O’Brien’s feature directorial debut, The Righteous, which screened at the Fantasia International Film Festival earlier this month. Granted, it was filmed in Canada and not the American South, but… Read More ›
There’s a demented fascination with nuns in modern society that I feel is worth examining. It’s an alien world of pious faith that most cannot even begin to understand, but we have taken many steps in trying to. From Black… Read More ›
From Rosemary’s Baby to False Positive, Psycho to Mommie Dearest, motherhood and the horror genre are a match made in heaven. The labyrinth of psycho-socio-political issues surrounding motherhood, pregnancy, and the mother-child relationship has truly found its home in horror… Read More ›
Japan is gonna Japan whether or not you want Japan to Japan, and when it Japans, it Japans hard. That in and of itself could be the singular tagline for Masashi Yamamoto’s Wonderful Paradise (脳天パラダイス), celebrating its North American premiere… Read More ›
Every now and then this gig, writing about movies, is an absolute godsend. It’s not that you get to travel the world from the safety of your couch, learning histories, seeing unimagined sights, but that there’s incredible opportunity to be… Read More ›
There are many ways to view identity. Some define themselves by their faith, by their location, by their profession, or by their hobbies, their fandoms. Some define themselves by their sex, their gender, or their sexual preference. One thing that… Read More ›
You don’t necessarily need complex characters or ingenious plot twists to write an engaging story. With strong imagery and a clear, palpable tone that physically affects your audience, you can transform the most overdone plot into a memorable tale. Writer/director… Read More ›
For most people, the teen years come with a myriad of confusing emotions, drastic life changes, and embarrassing incidents. For Akira and Maki, the young protagonists of Yoichi Narita’s Follow The Light, those formative years also bring a number of… Read More ›
Which would you rather do: the hard right thing or the easy wrong thing? A decision like this is simple when the stakes are low, like what’s for dinner: cooking it yourself when you have all the ingredients but are… Read More ›
From a certain point of view, individualism is the same as conformity. They might clash in their mission, but are otherwise simply a uniform someone wears in order to identify themselves. Got green hair made into spikes? Listen to antiestablishment… Read More ›
You don’t need a degree in film studies to make an educated guess about when a movie was made, or to at least place it within the right decade. It’s easy to recognize specific cinematic styles and themes from each… Read More ›
What defines “personhood”? This is a complex question that gets debated quite a bit, specifically in regard to pre-birth healthcare. Is it from the moment of cell division, the presence of a heartbeat, or the moment a life reaches prime… Read More ›
In this life there are few things worse than being misunderstood, to possess the feeling that those around you can’t see about you what you see in yourself. This schism between social reflection and personal identity has been the source… Read More ›
Storytelling is all about execution. You can have the most fascinating, compelling, edge-of-your-seat concept, but, if the execution flounders, nothing else matters. Take the story about the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo which saw the introduction of volleyball as an… Read More ›
Mixed media films are not particularly unique in and of themselves, but, when done well, they add an element of otherworldliness or imagination to the story. The rotoscoping in Waking Life (2001) empowers the scene with Timothy “Speed” Levitch to… Read More ›
When it comes to self-discovery, there is no one right path, no universal means for those who walk this earth to become comfortable with themselves. This is the struggle, the burden we all share, whether we’ll admit it or not…. Read More ›
Immigrant stories are treated as all-to-common and extraordinary in the same breath, especially in the United States and Canada. The majority of people who live in both countries did not originate there and each possess a legacy of doing terrible… Read More ›
Documentaries that manage to introduce a new audience to something niche and relatively uncommon (while retaining entertainment value and artistic excellence) instantly earn my admiration. From director Jeremy Workman and executive producer Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Topples the World shows… Read More ›
From director Mary Wharton, the documentary Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free feels like a secret glimpse into a lost part of history. Considering that we are less than three decades removed from the time period of this film’s focus,… Read More ›
SXSW 2021 has come and gone, offering accredited press a dizzying array of opportunities in which to indulge. While the Elements of Madness coverage team wrote a hearty portion of reviews, there were far more films worth seeing than we… Read More ›