Out of Which Past?
by Barry Germansky Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko (2001) proves that genre does not exist outside the enterprise of convenient label-making. Due to the malleability of language, any work of [...]
Invasion of the Adulthood Snatchers
by Barry Germansky The adult world is polymorphously corrupt and lacks the imagination to recognize that "The Way Things Are" is merely a byproduct of a deteriorating sense of [...]
Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List, and the Crisis of Representation
by Barry Germansky Schindler's List (1993) is quite possibly the most philosophically significant dramatic narrative film ever made (and all doubt of the film's supreme philosophical status is removed [...]
Pulp Revenge: Thoughts on the Ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark
by Barry Germansky This is cinema of control. How can one explain the existence of past, present, and future Nazis? One cannot, at least not at the fundamental level of [...]
Moonraker
Moonraker (1979), the most outlandish of the first fourteen James Bond masterpieces (which are also the only entries I consider “official”), defies virtually every standard of knowledge and canon of respectability [...]
Thoughts on the Homespun Wisdom of L. Frank Baum, the Oz books, and The Wizard of Oz (1939)
by Barry Germansky L. Frank Baum may lack the linguistic brilliance of Lewis Carroll, but he is certainly a formidable wordsmith. What is more, he possesses two qualities that are [...]
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) is endlessly rewarding. The rubber Gill-man suit at the film's core has the abstracting power of an African mask, and director Jack Arnold instinctively recognizes this epistemological [...]
The Shining
The Shining (1980) is the fullest representation of Stanley Kubrick’s self-conscious alienating lens. The film is more about Kubrick, the polymorphous satirist, than Stephen King, the modern master of the colloquial horror tale. This [...]