Review: The Invisible Man

by Chris Feil

What was once meant for the microwaved territory of the would-be Dark Universe has found new, timely, and sometimes ingenious life as a one-off. Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man morphs its source material with a shift in perspective, making its mad scientist a complete phantom figure to the audience.

However, he is a monster all too intimately familiar to the protagonist, Elisabeth Moss’s fraught survivor Cecilia. The film aims to place itself alongside the greats of our current age of horror by placing us thrillingly in her escape from abuse, and in turn offers something fresher to its namesake than previously imagined. If not always a complete success in its genre elements, on a conceptual basis, The Invisible Man is valuable and invigorating as a portrait of the fallout from enduring domestic abuse.

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The Emmas of Yore: ITV's "Emma"

by Cláudio Alves

The character of Emma Woodhouse is a tricky one to play. At least, if the actress is trying to reproduce the personality Jane Austen wrote in her famous novel. She's a daughter of privilege who has grown to believe she's much cleverer than what is true. A matchmaker by vocation, Emma is a busybody who's always interfering in other people's lives, presumptuous and terminally judgmental of all that surrounds her. She can also be a bit of a mean girl when indulged. Still, these character flaws are nothing but the folly of youth and the consequence of a provincial upbringing. Emma Woodhouse is naïve to a fault and desperately romantic. More importantly, she's not intentionally cruel or callous, just foolish.

This mix of a meddler's instinct and a daydreamer's heart is a difficult one to represent without skewing the balance of the characterization. In that regard, Kate Beckinsale might be the best Emma of them all…

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Doc Corner: Oh, the horror! 'Scream, Queen!' and 'Horror Noire'

By Glenn Dunks (who is currently counting down my top documentaries of the decade over on Twitter. Follow along!)

Horror movies are obviously an audience-beloved industry-entrenched part of the movie business. Even if the genre hasn’t always gotten the respect it deserves, horror has been a vital part in the cinematic stories for African American audiences and for queer audiences. These are, after all, viewers that have been ignored by the mainstream industry at large for as long as movies have existed. Minority audiences have often found the catharses and long-documented history of othered subtext of scary movies to be rare portals of release.

How great it is then to see two new documentaries Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street and Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror focusing on these elements and offering glimpses into the complicated realm of what it is like to be a viewer and a creator in these spaces...

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The Emmas of Yore: Miramax's "Emma"

by Cláudio Alves

Following the Jane Austen cinematic frenzy of 1995, the author was Hollywood's it-girl. At least, as far as classic writers were concerned. The following year nobody could get enough of Emma, with Clueless being adapted into a sitcom, and two other adaptations of the book being produced on both sides of the Atlantic. Today, we're here to talk about Miramax's lavish Emma starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, Toni Collette, and Ewan McGregor, among many other wonderful thespians. It's one hell of a cast.

Still, despite its enviable collection of actors, this isn't the best screen version of Emma. For one, the project could have used a bit less fidelity to the source material and a lot more narrative ingenuity…

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Streaming YA Randomnees: Locke & Key and Ragnarok

What entirely random thing have you found yourself watching lately? With every streaming service showing content from all over the world, it's increasingly rare for everyone to be on the same viewing journey...

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