The website of John C. Snider
Armageddon Time (2022) – I can’t validate the numerous comparisons that have been made with Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans (not yet having seen the latter), but I can recommend this story of a family of New York Jews at the dawn of the Reagan era, which features themes of racism and classism, and a strange …
Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape (2016) – An alternatively exuberant and depressing documentary about the history of the cassette tape (invented in 1963) and its democratizing effect on music culture. Includes interviews with celebs like Henry Rollins, enthusiastic collectors, and the near-monosyllabic Dutch inventor who acts like he’d rather talk about anything else. Little Children (2006) …
It’s hard to impress upon fans born in the twenty-first century just what deserts television networks and movie theaters were for science fiction in the twentieth century. This is not to say those media were devoid of sci-fi, but with only three networks and five major studios, fans were lucky if there were more than …
While doing a little background research a few weeks ago for my review of The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Harry Belafonte’s provocative 1959 post-nuclear-Armageddon drama), I discovered just how hard it can be sometimes to nail down what was “the first” of something. It turns out that TWTFATD, while a very early cinematic depiction of …
I first discovered Mark Rylance in the summer of 2001, when I bought a groundling ticket at the Shakespeare’s Globe in London to see a performance of the Bard’s Cymbeline. Rylance was artistic director of the Globe at the time, appearing in Cymbeline in a supporting role as Cloten, but he stood out to me, with his confident, …
This review contains spoilers. French writer/director Julia Ducournau made a splash with her first feature film, 2016’s meaty psychological horror-thriller Raw. (Full disclosure: I have not yet seen this film.) Her sophomore effort—Titane—has also made a splash, winning the coveted Palme d’Or at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Titane falls undeniably and unapologetically into the category of “body …
The end of the world is big business nowadays. Between streaming and broadcasting and movie theaters (which are themselves dying), hardly a month goes by that we aren’t introduced to some apocalypse or Armageddon or what-have-you. If it’s not zombies, it’s a vicious pandemic; if it’s not a giant meteor, it’s an alien invasion. Americans, …
I have been inspired lately to revisit the question of the “great” sci-fi films. (See my previous posts on the Top 10 Sci-Fi Films of the 2000s and Top 10 Sci-Fi Films of the 2010s.) Others online have taken some pretty good recent stabs at this (see, e.g., “Moid Moidelhoff” at Media Death Cult, who …
It’s hard to believe it’s been over twenty-two years since the Wachowskis (then brothers Larry and Andy; now sisters Lana and Lilly—long story) introduced the world to Neo (Keanu Reeves), a hapless hacker who discovers he and most of the rest of humanity are really living in the Matrix, a virtual reality created by Machines …
Looking back at my “Top 10 Sci-Fi Films of the 2000s” inspired me to similarly revisit the 2010s. In 500 words or less. Here goes: 1. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) / Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) / War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) – It’s cheating to name all three legs of …