Category: Movies
It’s Not About What It’s About: Dissecting Some Cult Classics
Buckaroo Banzai is really more fantasy than SF. Where Star Wars is the classic Quest fantasy, Buckaroo Banzai follows a different story; there is a hidden world we don’t know about, and in that world, forces of good and evil are waging a war with our world hanging in the balance. Our hero, a surprisingly resourceful person, has the ability to enter that world and fight for us, along with a team of allies, each of whom is an expert in a different area with skills that the team needs. By recasting this trope in the form of urban legends and conspiracy theories, Buckaroo Banzai responds to anxieties about things out of our control and assures us that we have a champion in the hidden battle. It’s religion for a post-supernatural world.
It’s not easy to make the Earth catch fire
Some years back, I finally bought the DVD for 1961’s The Day the Earth Caught Fire. I’d wanted to see this British film ever since reading about it in Bill …
Down these magic streets a man must go: Lovecraft, P.I.
When my DVD player/VCR died a while back, that left my VHS tapes more or less orphaned. Sure, I could get down my backup VCR and swap it out with …
The Sweet Glow of Electric Sex
When I was living in Shalimar Florida in the early 1970s, there was a drive-in just a couple of miles from our house. I never went. Even after I got …
What’s Wrong With ‘Watchmen’?
My topic today is what it says in the title; what’s wrong with Watchmen? Specifically, what’s wrong with the movie, and in particular, why it is absolutely not a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel.