Right away, the cinematography of The Gift implies something is not right with the film’s central couple, Simon and Robyn (Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall). As Jim Hemphill writes in his review of the film for Paste: [Director Joel] Edgerton’s eerily still and angular compositions, in which Simon and Robyn are repeatedly framed through glass, … Continue reading Stranger Danger
As editor of the second edition of “Critical Discourse” for Critical Distance (please hold your applause to the end) on Danger featuring Gita Jackson, Aevee Bee and Nick Dinicola, I was a part of another exciting letter series.1 I’ve never had any direct contact with Dinicola even though he is a colleague of mine at PopMatters but his work … Continue reading Multiplayer, Multispeaker: How We Talk About Games
[Originally posted on PopMatters] HyperSloth describes Dream as a “Walking Simulator,” a term not universally appreciated among game critics,1 but still implies a certain kind of recognizable game. A walking simulator is deliberately slow, and it refrains from typical “gamey” conventions like objectives and challenges. A walking simulator is an introspective character study, the minimalist art … Continue reading Review: Dream
[Originally posted on PopMatters] As useful as it is to not judge a book by its cover, some covers simply reveal everything there is to know. Take a look at the cover of a Dungeons & Dragons manual and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect out of its contents. Similarly, looking at … Continue reading Review: Kyn
[This piece was written as a part of Critical Distance‘s July 2015 Blogs of the Round Table feature] There’s a section in to the Saints Row IV where the player-character, the boss—in my case a pink-haired woman with a french accent, floral body tattoos and an outstanding fashion sense—rides a purple jet-bike through cyberspace, shooting aliens … Continue reading Rethinking Fun with Saints Row IV
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