Scout Tafoya's series on underrated films moves to Dario Argento's 1998 maligned adaptation.
The latest and greatest on Blu-ray, including The Croods: New Age, Event Horizon, Celine and Julie Go Boating, and Promising Young Woman.
A look at the changes in the horror world in 2020, most notably how the pandemic and rise of streaming services allowed a greater audience for international horror.
A tribute to the late, great Fred Willard.
Jessica Ritchey on the episodes of The Twilight Zone that she thinks about the most.
The latest in our monthly series looks at Walter Hill's controversial thriller.
The newest chapter of our video series takes a look at one of Tobe Hooper's underrated gems.
A history of the "Resident Evil" films and video games, how they've influenced each other, and how the two latest entries split.
A guide to the latest on Blu-ray, including "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" and "Only Angels Have Wings" (the first time those two movies have ever been in a sentence together).
A piece on four films from the opening week of the 2014 New York Film Festival: "Heaven Knows What," "Seymour, an Introduction," "Stray Dog" and "Beloved Sisters."
Released in the summer of 1985 to critical scorn and near-total commercial indifference, the sci-fi/horror hybrid "Lifeforce" has spent most of the following 28 years languishing in obscurity. If it was remembered at all, it was either because of its massive financial failure--which helped doom the futures of both its producing company and its director--or because of its status as one of the all-time favorite films of Mr. Skin, that beloved repository of on-screen nudity.
Peet at NegativeSpace knows it when he sees it.
In the 1957 case Roth v. United States, the US Supreme Court held that the First Amendment did not protect obscenity, which Justice William Brennan characterized as a form of expression that was "utterly without redeeming social importance..." and which "... to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest."
In Jacobeliis v. Ohio (1964), Justice Potter Stewart wrote his famous description of pornography: I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case [Louis Malle's 1958 "The Lovers"/"Les Amants"] is not that.Nine years later, in Miller v. California, Chief Justice Warren Burger offered his famous definition of obscenity:The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.Today, of course, porn is made for the World Wide Interwebs, and so-called "torture porn" is mainstream multiplex fare. In a post called "The 120 Days of HOSTEL PART II" at The Exploding Kinetoscope, Chris Stangl argues that the phrase "torture porn" is simply a meaningless critical buzzword, "a non-position that allows a critic not to engage the work. It's critical name-calling." Stengl writes: "Any review, op-ed piece, or coverage of 'Hostel Part II' that includes the phrase 'torture porn' as if it were a meaningful genre designation, I will not finish reading. A line must be drawn. We all have our limits." (Thanks to The House for calling my attention to Stangl's site.)
I was about to disagree with this (after all, I happen to know torture porn when I see it!) -- but then...
LOS ANGELES - It was one of those California Sunday brunches where everyone's expected to fill up on organic bran muffins and honeydew melons and five flavors of herbal tea...the kind of brunch where Bianca Jagger is chatting with Peter Weir, this hot young Australian director, while a reporter from Variety stands between them, so eager to eavesdrop on the conversation.
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