Cosmic horror is one of the most complex types of horror to examine. It is also one of the bleakest subgenres of horror. Based on the literary philosophy, Cosmicism, developed by the writer H. P. Lovecraft, cosmic horror focuses on the power of the sublime in order to make people feel inconsequential and small. There […]
Scifi has always been a vehicle for the exploration of philosophical, abstract problems actualized in imaginative technologies, theoretical futures, and alien worlds. Consider the Matrix films’ staging of problems surrounding artificial intelligence, Platonic/Descartian themes of consciousness and reality, in the digestible form of an action thriller, adapted to a reemerging interest in virtual reality technology […]
For the most part, Taste of Cinema’s 2020 movie coverage has come to a close but, as with previous years, we fell head over heels for a number of films that seemed to get short shrift on other movie sites or, largely owing to the pandemic, didn’t get the propers that they so richly deserved. […]
In 1998 Martin Scorsese compiled a list of his favourite guilty pleasures for Film Comment magazine. Included with them were a further hundred films, termed his “random pleasures”. These were grouped into fifty he considers “unguilty [but] something spoils them”, and fifty which on the whole are “not good” but still “worthwhile”. Widely regarded as […]
In an age when people are justly cynical about the character of their heroes and celebrities, we still like to harbour a secret hope that some of them might actually be decent people. Well, by some glitch in the matrix, history handed us at least two gentlemen in the movies who showcased ultimate class, erudition, […]
When it comes to horror movies, it’s all too easy to fall into a deep rut. For the casual film fan, Halloween might be the only time of year when the cobwebs get dusted off the scary stuff, and annual traditions are popular and fun to create. But, once those routines form, the effort to […]