We are not used to our heroes committing heinous crimes. Most heroes we think of during our modern era come along with the adjective “super.” They are beyond human, unimpeachable examples of moral and physical strength. They would never...
Why gamble for money when you can win luxury? A Tale of Two Families From the trailer of the 2019 Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Parasite”, one can say it is a film simply about the rich versus poor. Upon...
The charismatic Humphrey Bogart had a penchant for playing misanthropic characters repeatedly. Perhaps the chain-smoking screen legend borrowed somewhat from his personal life when creating loner characters. Bogart seemed like someone who, like contemporary James Cagney, preferred to maintain...
Women in Dostoyevsky: Brave and Beautiful Sonya from Crime and Punishment, Nastasya Filippovna from The Idiot, and Grushenka from The Brothers Karamazov… Written as women of beauty, readers see their struggles in Dostoyevsky’s novels. But, in the words of...
Before seeing “The Farewell”, think of the last time you’ve seen a grandma in a movie- what did she do with her grandchild? Did she cook up their favorite meal? Maybe she was a tree and magically blew some...
In our upcoming vlog post (currently in editing) by Carolyn Ho and Kate Penney , we compared Raskolnikov, the tortured hero of Crime and Punishment, with a star of contemporary pop culture, Spider-Man, using the concept of vigilante justice as...
How the Scary Experience Does Not Make Up a Scary Story Here’s a fun fact of my fictional preference: I am not a huge fan of scary stories. Sure, I’ll read up on ghosts, the paranormal, or discover the...
Independent director Larry Clark’s psychological crime drama film Bully–a depiction of the 1993 murder of Bobby Kent by his own circle of friends–was released in 2001 to sharply polarized criticism, the negative reviews targeting its allegedly gratuitous–and painfully straightforward–portrayal of...
No “Good Guys” in the Soviet Nuclear Disaster When you hear the word “Chernobyl”, what comes to mind? Before the hit HBO show of 2019, I like many others pictured hazard masks, a bright explosion, a deserted Soviet town,...
Dostoevsky. The name alone conjures up a cascade of words: Mystery. Morality. Russia. Faith. Doubt. Goodness. Corruption. Murder. Redemption. His writings offer many rewards, many treasures, but to discover them the uninitiated must often pass through a shroud of...
