This Machine Keeps the Ghost explores both the boundaries of outer space and the inner reaches of human experience.

This Machine Keeps the Ghost

"The Rover" as evisceration of traditional Westerns.

A Dismal Tide: The Rover’s Neo-Western Nature 

How shattering it is to be told by someone you consider a friend that they no longer have room for you in their life.

A Severing

Over the years, Them! has come to stand out being one of the few American genre films of that time to genuinely grapple with the weight of the nuclear option. 

The Nuclear Nest Stirs: The Timelessness of ‘Them!’

Putting the fear of Godzilla back on-screen required director Hideaki Anno, creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion, to do what he does best: make the monstrous holy. The result was Shin Godzilla (2016).

‘Shin Godzilla’: A City in the Hands of a Hurting God

Speaking as someone well aware of the erosion of his social life the past couple pandemic years, watching Sam open up to herself and others feels a bit like rooting for myself. 

Flyover Lives: Somebody Somewhere Season 1

Apatosauruses could be seen grazing from work
because what’s a more beautiful and
comforting daydream escape route


Late Cretaceous Mundanity

Death is the great equalizer and it’s at the core of The Long Dark’s gameplay. It will follow you across the land and there may be miles and wolves between you and someplace warm. This is the beauty and the point of The Long Dark’s survival fantasy.

TO FEEL SMALL AND KNOW YOUR WORTH: THE LONG DARK’S VISION OF SURVIVAL

A firefighter, responding to a fire at the number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Russia, picks up a smooth piece of rubble. Moments later the skin on his hand melts away. Miles away, ash slowly rains down upon onlookers.

Chernobyl: Blurring Real and Cinematic Horror

Cooking is an art. That’s a non-argument. To do it well means time, money, effort, and especially a love of the craft. 

The Bear and A Better Way Forward

(v1.0.1)

there’s a succession of nauseous seconds

when my sharp <hitching> breath forms a punctuation

a respiratory response of an exclamation point

when strangers wear the expressions of dead friends

the anxiety of facial recognition software

and their absence will rest as heavy as bruises

that linger like the thrum of laundromats 

when you’re already tired 

from the language of machines

tag:nsfw

now I’m struggling 
to forgive this timeline 
for how hard it is on small things
like homeless cats mewing on front porches
and headless robots with spilled microchips
turning the gutter into the milky way

2 Poems

Instead Lodge 49’s plans are done by people left desperate from the perpetual weight of late stage capitalism. But often these plans, with all their chances for a better life, are put on hold in order to help one another.

Alchemy and Afternoon Beers: The Beauty of Lodge 49

This is a game where not only are blue-collar workers treated as heroes, but the basic mechanics and environments are designed to encourage players to care about such laborers and what they go through in order to keep society going.

NEITHER SNOW, RAIN, NOR GLOOM OF GHOSTS: DEATH STRANDING AND THE WEIGHT OF WORK

This is a game that lets its men grieve, rage, and bond in ways that aren’t commonly depicted within big-budget video games. Even more surprising are Death Stranding’s overarching themes about the rejection of hopeless fatalism and isolation.

INTRICATE RITUALS AND THE TIES THAT BIND: EMOTIVE MASCULINITY IN DEATH STRANDING

If movies are a reflection of the times, then it’s easy to feel overcrowded. Even onscreen, it increasingly feels like there’s no space left to turn for solitude.

Outside the City Limits: An Appreciation for Civilization's End

But where horror films often use this tool [film grit] to heighten tension or disgust, Boyle uses it to further peel away layers of realism, lining the visuals with the same feeling of a half-grasped dream.

SLEEPING OFF THE FEVER: THE DREAM AESTHETICS OF 28 DAYS LATER

It may come as a surprise to find the spirit of Mr. Rogers living on in a show nestled between Rick & Morty and Eric André on Adult Swim.

Hello, my name is Joe Pera

I expect to lose friends to the Holy Trinity of cancer // car wrecks // time but I never expect it when I lose them to God

Losing My Friends to Religion (or, Prose Poem for Saint Maud)

Tales from the Loop’s pacing isn’t for everyone, especially for people who prefer complex science fiction or a stronger connective tissue in their story anthologies. This is a family picture album, not a flipbook. 

Wyeth Leslie

Books

Selected work