Sign in Subscribe

Vaughn Swearingen

Fantasia 2025: Garo: Taiga - The Return of the King

Fantasia 2025: Garo: Taiga - The Return of the King

Tokusatsu as a genre feels like the last bastion of creative cinematic irreverence, a space where the rules can constantly be reinvented, where franchises are little more than loose guidelines to make weird, wacky chaos. Few filmmakers exemplify this guerilla approach like Keita Amemiya, whose prolific career in the tokustatsu

28 Years Later: The Heavens Fall, But Still We Crawl

28 Years Later: The Heavens Fall, But Still We Crawl

How many hundreds of years have we fallen this time? The apocalypse as cultural time dilation, decades sanding down the thin line of civility that once separated us from the monsters ravaging the landscape. Isolation has destroyed us, the bridges we once built to unite us across great distances now

Fantasia Retro 2025: Reconstructing the Past

Fantasia Retro 2025: Reconstructing the Past

The retrospectives and restorations category of any film festival is always a treat, bringing new life to old favorites or resurfacing hidden gems from decades past. Restoration work is critical to the preservation, archival, and history of cinema, allowing us to ensure culturally important works are preserved in the best

Ten Films To See At Fantasia 2025

Ten Films To See At Fantasia 2025

With dozens of premieres and restorations between both features and short films, comprising the entire spectrum of genre cinema and global filmmaking, Quebec's premiere film festival is here with a towering lineup of fascinating films to explore. This year's festival runs from July 16 - August

I'm Thinking of Spoiling Things: Pavements

I'm Thinking of Spoiling Things: Pavements

At what point does a bit border on self-parody? Is releasing a three-sided LP consisting of experimental music meant to alienate your audience in any way similar to delaying the release of your sporadically scheduled podcast due to some form of intangible anxiety built on a nonexistent expectation of bit-laden

F1: Going The Distance

F1: Going The Distance

It may seem like an easy target, but it is hard to avoid comparing Joseph Kosinski to the late Tony Scott. Scott followed up the original Top Gun with Days of Thunder, a film widely critiqued on release for feeling largely like a cheaper version of Top Gun with cars.

The Best Films of 2025 (So Far), And What To Look Forward To

The Best Films of 2025 (So Far), And What To Look Forward To

We return once more to the year in progress, where 2025 lies on the scale of cinematic exploration, and what's left to come as the latter half of the year ramps up with award hopefuls and festival premieres going wide. 2025 has been flooded with a kaleidoscopic deluge