Category: Essays

‘Bicycle Thieves’ and Other Apocalyptic Movies

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As far back as human civilization can be traced, there have been stories about the end of the world. The Norse had Ragnarok, Christianity has the Rapture, and the Mayans had 2012.

Some have argued film as a form of modern mythology, and as anyone who has been to a movie theater in the past decade or so can tell you, modern film is chock full of apocalyptic stories. It’s only right—every mythology needs its ‘end of times’ tales. They tell a lot about the culture that produced them: what their fears were, and how they perceived death.

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The Movie Lied: Tactical Realism and ‘The Return of the Living Dead’

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I really like zombie films. Not because I find the creatures interesting, but because these films tend to be open and blunt about their ideas. The first three of Romero’s Dead movies are not really about the zombies themselves—they’re about how, in many ways, we’re zombies already. Dawn of the Dead’s shots of zombies milling around in a shopping mall is one of the most haunting things I have ever seen.

What I don’t like, however, is a particular brand of zombie fan—the ones who obsess over the idea of the zombies themselves, like they’re some kind of mathematical puzzle that can be ‘solved’. This leads to the creation and popularization of books like The Zombie Survival Guide. This completely misses the point of the films these fans supposedly like, and has led to a school of film viewership I will hereby refer to as ‘Tactical Realism’.

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There Is No Such Thing As A ‘Reboot’

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I saw the new Godzilla yesterday. I enjoyed it a lot, but I’ve been weirded out for months over the fact that I’ve had to call it something I’ve never had to call a Godzilla film. Just like how I recently had to call a Bond film something that, in 50 years of recasting and returning to ground zero, I’ve never had to call a Bond film.

I’m all for specialized vocabulary. Film needs its own exclusive words to describe its own processes, but ‘reboot’ is not such a word. I’ve asked people time and again to define it, and I’ve read about it online—god help me, I’ve even read the Wikipedia page for it. It’s just not a real and distinct concept. It’s a cheap marketing buzzword, that’s all it is. And more than that, the very existence of the term is symptomatic of a rot at the core of contemporary filmmaking.

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Michael Bay: Futurist

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Paths of Movement + Dynamic Sequences, 1913 | Transformers: Dark of the Moon, 2011

Editor’s Note: John D’Amico’s piece, Michael Bay: Futurist, is no longer available on this site because it has been selected for inclusion in a upcoming scholarly print examination of the films of Michael Bay which is slated for release in 2018 via a major publishing house.  The book will feature a wide range of new perspectives about Bay’s work from a range of scholars, cinephiles, and filmmakers.

To Punctuate Or Not To Punctuate

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There’s an immediate irony to this piece in that its title lacks punctuation. Said punctuation is not missed, of course—it’d be superfluous of me to put a period, due to the fact that the title text being larger and bolder than the long column of text below it makes it feel plenty contained. The only reason for me to put a little black dot at the end of it would be if I wanted it to be read with stern inflection:

To Punctuate Or Not To Punctuate.

See the difference? You can’t help but it read it in your head as though shit has just gotten real, and that this will be a seriouser-than-normal article where I’ve got a real bone to pick with a thing. Such is not the case—if anything, I’m merely raising a bone to the sky a la that ape in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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