Blade Runner
Viewers never question Deckard’s humanity… except, perhaps, during this scene.
Movies
Semiotics in/of movies…
Apocalypse Now
In the existential jungle, empathy makes a man fitter for survival. But at what price?
The Fifth Element
Leeloo's strength is also her weakness.
The Bad News Bears
In life, as in baseball, things can always get better. Or worse.
Raising Arizona
A blank affect can be a canny psychic-survival stratagem.
Young and Innocent
It’s not about right vs. wrong, it’s about wit vs. shit.
Buckaroo Banzai
For one moment, it seemed as though the Eighties might turn out OK.
Barbarella
In its silly way, this is a movie about female sexual power.
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
A non-compact topological group of bare-breasted women in G-strings.
The African Queen
How to survive not war, but peace, with one’s humanity intact?
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Comical yet not funny, equal-opportunity in its portrayal of human folly, artificial in the extreme.
Dazed and Confused
Single-night movies aren’t snapshots, they’re moonlit summoning rituals.
A Bucket of Blood
Beatnik gives us anti-highbrow Beat-ness without the exaltation.
Robocop
How best to convey the pathos and tragedy of the Ex-Ex-Human Condition?