Zack and Miri (an effective Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks) are two childhood friends who share an apartment and a friendship that they both insist is utterly platonic. Never amounting to anything after leaving high school ten years ago the two slackers spend their days wallowing about their dire financial situation, and working dead-end jobs…Read more Film Review: Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Superman
“A Man Can Run Out of Things to Live For” – On the Ethos of Superhero Film Love Interests
Wolverine has always been a tormented soul, a social pariah damned by his stunted aging and propensity for berserker rage. He is a character with meat on his bones and certainly one of the richer creations in the X-Men pantheon. Of course, much of that complexity has never been effectively addressed in the various film…Read more “A Man Can Run Out of Things to Live For” – On the Ethos of Superhero Film Love Interests
“I’m As American As It Gets” – On the Murky Immigration Politics of Man of Steel
If there is a half-way coherent theme in Zach Snyder's polarizing mega-film, Man of Steel, it is the trauma of choice. More specifically, Steel relates the dichotomized inner-life created through the experience of immigration, where one simultaneously feels the pressures of nationalism for one's current home, and vestiges of loyalty towards the individual's original homeland, and then must…Read more “I’m As American As It Gets” – On the Murky Immigration Politics of Man of Steel
Film Review: Man of Steel (2013)
At one point in Man of Steel the ethereal spirit of Big Blue’s long-deceased papa Jor-El grimly assures his son that he will not only be able to save Lois Lane from the fiendish General Zod, but all of humanity. This statement becomes increasingly more absurd as the movie moves towards its finale: a big albeit vapid rumble in the…Read more Film Review: Man of Steel (2013)
Adam Mohrbacher 