'Frankenstein'

Movies are all products of their time, but comedies are especially tricky. Laughter is often based on behavior that is in opposition to societal norms, so what’s funny to one generation may seem stale or toothless a few decades later. Which is why it’s remarkable that this nearly 78-year-old screwball farce from writer/director Preston Sturges…

It’s been a totally chill and normal month for HBO Max. Definitely nothing significant happened to affect the best streaming service around, like, say, new CEO David Zaslav canceling a bunch of forthcoming shows and even a $90 million Batgirl movie and making the decision to remove a bunch of content—including movies and shows produced…

Screenshot: The Night NurseThis week in puzzling online discourse, a subset of Gen Z is looking wistfully back on the era of the Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, a voluntary (well, technically) set of censorship standards Hollywood rigorously adhered to from 1934 through the late 1960s. It all began with…

Movies date themselves for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes what seemed great when we were kids looks silly to adult eyes. Other times the whys are more complicated—think Rambo III and The Living Daylights making heroes of mujahideen jihadists because, at the time, they were fighting the Soviets. Standards change, too, often for the better—we…

Famous ghosts put on a ghoulish display at Japan baseball gameThe worlds of Ju-On and Ring, two Japanese horror mega-franchises that made it big in North America, weren’t linked until 2016, roughly two decades after they kicked off. Ju-on, also known as The Grudge, began as a couple of short films and expanded into the…

Some of the very best movies of all time have flaws that aren’t terminal, but that are nevertheless prominent: a questionable performance, a problematic element, an ending that doesn’t quite land. That’s fine—a film that takes risks and doesn’t quite stick the landing is generally preferable to one that’s technically proficient but dull, and a…

What exactly makes a movie a “classic” varies wildly and with the viewer, as does the appropriate timescale. For some, a movie from a decade ago might be eligible (I call these movie fans “children”). For others, you have to go back a lot further. Today, I’m going to do the latter, taking a look…

In 1818 Mary Shelley published “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.”In the novel, Frankenstein brings a creature to life with a "spark of being."Grotesque experiments with electricity and corpses may have inspired Shelley. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app In the new…