“The 30 Best South Korean Films of the 21st Century”
At High on Films, Nafees Ahmed offers a list of the thirty best South Korean movies of the 21st Century–and some honorable mentions! (Thanks, Mike!)
From the Archives: Loving the Alien: Superman and Masculinity
Superman’s greatest power is not his strength or heat vision, but his restraint and his theatricality both in restraining that power while pretending to fight as hard as he can and in passing as Clark Kent.
“I’ve Heard The Mer-Man Singing”
Friend of the Gutter Jessica Ritchey writes about The Toys That Made Us, the fragility of masculinity and how we got where we are. “’The stories we tell matter’ is usually meant as a piece of feel good puffery. But there’s a real warning in that statement too. […]
“Book vs. Flick: The Stepford Wives”
Friend of the Gutter Sara Century writes about The Stepford Wives. “The story has been made into multiple films—the first being a play-by-play of the book in 1975, followed by mostly irrelevant sequels like Revenge of the Stepford Wives, The Stepford Children, and The Stepford Husbands. The original film retains […]
“The Broken Masculinity of the Punisher”
Dr. Nerdlove writes about The Punisher and Frank Castle’s broken masculinity. “Like the incredible Jessica Jones, Marvel’s The Punisher examines and elevates a character and a genre defined by tropes and clichés. Despite being one in a long series of knock-offs of the Lone Vigilante genre – codified in its modern […]
“Truth In Jest”
At Hazlitt, Emma Healey writes about a particular scene in the fourth season of Louis CK’s Louie. “By the time Louie was in its fourth season, its protagonist had a lot of audience goodwill to burn, and C.K. seemed to want to do something legitimately complicated with it: […]
The Cultural Gutter 