It’s another edition of the Weekend Watchlist! I feel like January is the month we OFFICIALLY all start hibernating. Our bodies and minds can barely handle the outdoor weather, we either eat just soups or everything in sight, and when we come home from work/school we TURN. ON. THAT. TV. So this weekend I’m serving you some bingeable classic event TV realness. Y’know, something that you can watch for hours on end pretty much without thinking. I like to call it “I-don’t-care-that-my-chin-has-receded-into-my-neck-while-I-watch” TV. Does that make sense? I’m work-shopping it. LOST (2004-2010)- Lost was a show I always thought was really fun and mystical, but I only got around to watching a coupl

Title: American Vandal (2017) Genre: Mockumetary, Satire Stars: Tyler Alvarez, Griffin Gluck, Jimmy Tatro, Camille Hyde Grade: A In a Nutshell: Senior burnout and known prankster, Dylan Maxwell (Jimmy Tatro) from Hanover High School is accused of the most heinous crime the school has ever seen — someone spray painted a dick on each of the 27 cars in the staff parking lot. Here’s the thing though — Dylan says he didn’t do this prank. Luckily for him, sophomore and aspiring filmmaker, Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez), offers to uncover the truth by making a documentary in the vein of true crime series such as Making a Murderer, Serial, and The Jinx. With the help of the school’s news crew (and

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (2017) - Electric Dreams consists of ten episodes, each of them adapted from a different short story by sci-fi author Philip K. Dick. Overall, while a few episodes are generic and predictable, I’d say most of them are worth watching. In probably the best episode of the bunch, "The Commuter," an unhappy train station worker named Ed ends up in Macon Heights, an alternate reality and utopian town. In this new life, Ed’s troubled son Sam was never born. Ultimately, Ed has to choose between the sweet perfection of Macon Heights, or the bitter reality he left behind with Sam. Like Black Mirror, there’s plenty of technological gloom and cynicism in this series, but

In horror and science fiction genres, female monsters and baddies have graced the big screen for decades. This article will count down the five best monstrous women in film. To clarify, I'm avoiding villainesses – antagonistic characters that usually enter the film already fully-formed monsters. Instead, I'm interested in looking at women who transform into monsters over the course of the film (or a series of films), and with whom the audience generally sympathizes and identifies. I have also avoided including women who are demonically possessed or turned into vampires; to me, the more interesting characters are women who are transformed into monsters through the machinations of science, gen

In honor of the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend here are five recommendations or films that I'm interested in that celebrate African-American figures or filmmakers. Selma (2014) - I've talked about Ava DuVernay's film focusing on the 1965 march on Selma, Alabama before, but this seems like an appropriate time to revisit it. Starring David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr., Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, and Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon Johnson, the film was released to nearly unanimous critical acclaim. Along with Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Song (which it won, for John Legend and Common's "Glory), and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor (Oyelowo), Direc

[UPDATED] 2018 is upon us, and with it nearly a dozen new comic book/superhero-centric films. For some of these we've been treated to full trailers, while others are still shrouded in mystery. Regardless, here's an overview (with my thoughts) on the upcoming year of comic book films. Black Panther (February 16th) – Fifty-two years after introducing their first black superhero, Marvel releases their first superhero film with a black lead (and it only took them until the 18th film in their cinematic universe to do so)! This is legitimately the film (comic adaptation or otherwise) I’m most looking forward to this year, not just because of my love of the character, but also because Chadwick Bose

Dave Made a Maze (2017) - This movie is like the demented love child of The Muppets, John Dies at the End, and Mark Z. Danielewski's horror novel, House of Leaves. As a fan of low budget, campy horror comedy, Dave Made a Maze appealed to my fan sensibilities. As a millennial, it appealed to the sense of vague shiftlessness and interrupted adulthood commonly associated with my generation. Although the end of the film was a bit dissatisfying (maybe that's the point, though), it is one of the most visually inventive and charming movies I've seen recently, and accomplishes all that with minimal budgets and a small cast of relatively unknown actors. Streaming on Hulu. The Babysitter (2017) - Anot

Title: The Shape of Water (2017) Genre: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy Director: Guillermo del Toro Stars: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Doug Jones Grade: A In a Nutshell: Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute woman working as a janitor at a science research facility outside of Baltimore in the 1960's. Elisa and her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) are in charge of cleaning the lab holding the facility's newest "asset" - a humanoid, aquatic creature (Doug Jones) that is the subject of cruel experiments. Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) has transported the creature from the Amazon to the facility in hopes that these experimen

Conferences In February of 2017, Kino Club 313 held our first ever conference. In the past, we have organized a yearly graduate student symposium – a one-day event where grad students from the area meet to share their research on a particular topic. The 2015 symposium, titled "Gender & Horror," was a small, two-panel symposium that generated lots of great discussion. The 2016 symposium, "Queer Stuff," was much larger, featuring more panels, a host (the lovely and talented Deja D. Dellataro), and keynote speaker Dr. Larry La Fountain from University of Michigan. Under the direction of the dedicated former club president, Peter Marra, these symposiums were growing into something really unique