Hannibal Rising
In the world of cinematic prequels, there’s a fragile détente—an uneasy truce—between the impulse to explain and the wisdom to leave well enough alone. Hannibal
April 7, 2025
In the world of cinematic prequels, there’s a fragile détente—an uneasy truce—between the impulse to explain and the wisdom to leave well enough alone. Hannibal
“Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore” is a novel for book lovers, sure. And maybe even more so, it’s a novel for _format_ lovers, for those of us who thrill at the medium as much as the message.
Everything Is Tuberculosis is a book that starts with a subject so unsexy—so dusty, so clinical, so thoroughly dismissed to the corners of American memory—that
The pages of “Never Lie” practically hum with the urgency of a writer who couldn’t type fast enough to keep up with her own ideas. This is not a book that pauses for breath—or for polish. And yet, somehow, that’s part of the appeal.
“Yeah. This is that thing where we live too much in areas of concern over which we have no influence or control.”
Women in Cages is a movie that dares to ask the question: What if we took all the worst parts of human suffering and made
Mank is a dazzlingly meticulous deep dive into the origins of Citizen Kane. It is something of a monument to the creative process. In fact,
There’s tension at the heart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pete writes, obviously. It’s a machine built on spectacle, on interconnected narratives, on the promise of something bigger always on the horizon. But what happens when that machine starts to feel… well, a little too efficient? A little too predictable? “Captain America: Brave New World,” the latest installment, sits squarely within this tension.
Sometimes, the most unsettling stories aren’t those that simply scare us, but those that make us interrogate the very nature of what we’re watching. Bigas Luna’s 1987 film, _Anguish_, does that, burrowing its way into your psyche with a meta-horror narrative that’s as bold as it is bonkers.
There is a moment in *Thunderball*—a flash, really—where you can see the franchise slipping just beyond its own grasp.