Western documentaries tend to rely upon the dual tropes of white saviorism and white sympathy to offer myopic approaches to complex interconnected cultural issues. This results in two-dimensional solutions to problems like climate change which tend to overlook marginalized groups that suffer for the global system of white supremacy. Seen as a bargaining tool and voice of […]
Reviews
Planet of the Humans and Climate Change: Muddled, Misinformed or Malevolent?
Planet of the Humans is a 2020 documentary directed by Jeff Gibbs, executive produced by Michael Moore and distributed by Films for Action. … Continue Reading
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Note: This review includes minor spoilers for Episode IX. It’s clear from the opening crawl that something is rotten in The Rise of … Continue Reading
Top Stories
Cowboys & Aliens: Extraterrestrial Manifest Destiny And Its Enduring White Gaze
On November 15, 2020, NASA and SpaceX partnered to launch a six-month science mission on the International Space Station. Despite the ravages of COVID-19, NASA's collaboration with this brainchild of Elon Musk, … Continue Reading
Salem Film Fest 2021: The Long Coast Q&A
Seafolk are a uniquely resilient bunch. Growing up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the oldest seaport in the country, I learned prosperity and precarity can alternate like the tide for fishermen. The danger of … Continue Reading
“Oh Hai!” The Room, Cult Films and Togetherness
The first time I watched The Room, I couldn't stand it. A friend had recommended the movie, but it was riddled with cheesy dialogue, stilted acting and continuity errors. When it finally reached its conclusion, I … Continue Reading
London Film Festival 2020 Highlights
It wasn’t like the last time I’d visited the British Film Institute. The buildings were all the same, massive cubes of concrete sitting along the bank of the Thames. Their façades were aglow with pink and blue … Continue Reading
Hoopleheads: Episode 37 “Deadwood: The Movie” with Emily VanDerWerff
A beautiful thing about recording a podcast dedicated to a show as old as Deadwood is that we have the advantage of jumping more than a decade into the future to see its eventual finale. This is Deadwood: The Movie, … Continue Reading
