scumbelievable

Fiction!

Hey guys, so since we passed the $500 mark I've been thinking hard about the choose-your-own adventure, and I just don't think I have the steam to run it on top of my other work. I'm still very muc...

Thanks, I Hate It: Captain America: Civil War

Writing film crit about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is sort of like trying to scale a sheer thirty-foot wall built around a vacant lot: difficult and unrewarding. Kevin Feige's near-algorithmic h...

I Don't Wanna Grow Up (And Neither Can You)

You can't show women being hurt. You can't show child abuse. You can't show rape. You can't show incest. Pedophilia, self-harm, intimate partner abuse, necrophilia, violence against children; if yo...

Thanks, I Hate It: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

I don't understand what it's like to be a dung beetle. There must, you know, be some underlying structure that impels their simple neural nets to roll big balls of shit, but whatever that structure...

Thanks, I Hate It: The West Wing

I'll admit that this is low-hanging fruit. Lots of people despise neoliberal jerkoff Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing for a multitude of well-articulated reasons. Still, I feel that even if I ...

Thanks, I Hate It: Jessica Jones

Maybe the most scathing thing I can think of to say about Jessica Jones is that it proceeds from the notion that David Tennant is scary. I understand that he's supposed to be this whiny, e...

Dreadnought: Leah's Body

Leah hung weightless in the dreadnought’s flooded cockpit. Diodes blinked around her in the gloom, but she hardly noticed them. Her attention were elsewhere, her thoughts burning in the dissociat...

In the Flesh: Us

Rich, buttery golds, washed-out blues, dried-blood reds and sepulchral greens. Us, Jordan Peele's sophomore horror feature, is one of the most richly colorful movies I've seen in recent me...

In the Flesh: Climax

Gaspar Noé's films always give the impression of trying to get closer to their subjects, of pressing up against skin and hair, of gripping warm flesh with rough fingers. Climax may not ca...

Thanks, I Hate It: Inception

"You've got to dream a little bigger, darling," says Tom Hardy's character to Joseph Gordon-Levitt's as, pinned down in a gun battle with faceless dream goons, Hardy pulls a grenade launcher out of...

In the Flesh: Alita: Battle Angel

There's not much to Alita: Battle Angel, which can of course be fine for an action movie. There's not much to Drunken Master when you get right down to it, and that's one of the m...

Thanks, I Hate It: Zodiac

They're watching Zodiac on the set of Zodiac.

I don't like Jake Gyllenhaal, who looks at all times like he's reciting "acting, acting, acting" in his head as he says his lin...

Dreadnought

Going to post the opening of my new giant mecha novella, Dreadnought, sometime next week! I'm so excited to share this one with you guys!

Thanks, I Hate It: The King's Speech

Tom Hooper doesn't really make movies so much as calculatedly inoffensive hagiographies of people whose family owned half the planet in recent memory. There's so much that's morally repugnant about...

Thanks, I Hate It: Avatar

Well, here we are at the end of this year’s Week of Loathing, and what better note to end on than a movie that shattered every box office record of note to become the highest-grossing film of all...

Thanks, I Hate It: Wall-E

Image caption reads: “Fat bulging over edge of ATMAT”

For about forty minutes, Wall-E is the story of a sad-cute robot roaming an endless wasteland of junk. It’s a goo...

Thanks, I Hate It: Thor

This is low-hanging fruit. I admit it. The Marvel movies are about as worthy of thought as their own promotional lunch boxes. But, you know, sometimes you want to give the work your heart, meet the...

Thanks, I Hate It: Blade Runner

Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic has its high points. The intricate, grimy sets, Darryl Hannah as the repulsively, tragically vulnerable android Pris—whose hellish death scene still gives me the s...

Thanks, I Hate It: Pacific Rim

There is an undeniable appeal to the old Toho Godzilla movies. Rubber monster suits, singing faeries, fat dollops of exposition about Shintoist compassion—it’s a creative palette you’re not g...

Thanks, I Hate It: The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson is the greatest horror writer of the 20th century. Barker and King come close, and their imagery surpasses hers, but they lack her depth of empathy, her subtle gift for understandin...

Week of Loathing

Hey gang, so next week I'm going to write a new Thanks, I Hate It every single day. Those five essays, and those only, will be open to the public. I so appreciate the support you show me on here an...

Thanks, I Hate It: Gladiator

Thanks, I Hate It: Gladiator

More than for any other reason, I hate this movie for killing Oliver Reed. One of the greatest actors of his generation, Reed’s career had been ruined by his al...

Thanks, I Hate It: Man of Steel

You know, I’m seldom impressed by Zack Snyder, but I couldn’t say I hate him. 300, for all that it’s a jingoistic, morally repulsive screed about how totally heterosexual and democra...

Ego Homini Lupus Download

For my $10, $15, and $25-dollar patrons, PDF and .epub files of my new novel. I hope you enjoy it <3