amber can walk

Source: Roger Ebert What's most frustrating about the representation of the internet in films and on TV is how incurious it is. Generally being portrayed as a vapid outlet for teenagers who are desperate for attention, social media, that is pretty much ubiquitous at this point and almost essential in staying up to date on socio-political issues, is villainised in a way that only comes across as insecure from the point of view of the writers. And I don't want to be ageist, but it does seem like the fear-mongering attitudes of someone too detached from young people's lives to even try to understand what it's function is in them. We're All Going To The World's Fair (2021) is refreshing, not just because of its transgressive use of form, but because it was so obviously made by someone who spent hours on the internet as a teenager, like myself and many other people now in their twenties. Jane Schoenbrun's bizarre coming of age story follows Casey as she plays an ...

Source: Rue Morgue The Velvet Vampire (1971) is a vampire horror hellbent on destabilising heterosexual monogamy through its exploration of desire and isolation. We follow Lee and Susan as their marriage becomes threatened through the presence of the ever-alluring Diane, a mysterious woman, who has invited them to her estate in the middle of the desert. Whilst there, their marriage and respective identities are troubled as they both seem to be attracted to Diane, who they suspect is actually a vampire. Playing on old stereotypes about the evil, promiscuous bisexual and made in a time of political unrest, it seems to be wrestling with the panic of change and the possibility of dual identities, as if those who are marginalised by normative society actually have something sinister to hide. Diane gets to punish those who seek to use her for sex and discard her afterwards and there is a certain amount catharsis that can be had from watching this film as a bisexual woman, whose identity is p...

Women's films are often left out of those lists you see going around of  ' 100 Greatest Films of All Time ' or ' 1001 Films To See Before You Die ', with only 5% of films directed by women being included in the latter. It's true that female directors have often been shut out of the film industry and struggle to get a second feature . All of the above means it's integral to preserve and commend excellent cinema created by women. To celebrate this International Women's Day, I've created a short watchlist of films directed (or co-directed) by women that I think are brilliant in terms of genre and important in terms of cultural significance. Children of Shatila (dir. by Mai Masri, 1999) Source: Mubi This documentary follows the displaced Palestinian refugees occupying the Shatila camp, focusing on the children who had been affected by the massacre that occurred a decade earlier. The director gave the children cameras and allowed them to film their surro...

Source: IndieWire At the end of last year, after watching the initial Jackass Forever (2022) trailer, I found myself being sucked into a world that I had been shut out of due to the fact that I was an infant when the original show first entered the culture. I'd absorbed the general conceit of Jackass and was aware of its popularity throughout my teens to the present, but hadn't ventured into it for one main reason - I didn't want to ruin people's fun. Media from the early 2000s seems to, almost universally, age incredibly poorly, which might seem like a moot point, as most things age poorly with time, but there's something particularly special about how unfunny, cruel and ubiquitous this brand of MTV edgy humour was. I think it affects me more than, say, a politically incorrect 70s film would because it was created within  my  lifetime, when surely, we should have known better. Unfortunately, films and TV from this time contain a barrage of transphobia, ableism and...