"Don't you understand? Your future is metal!"

Happy Pride to anyone who has ever contended with a sense of self that is built first around the expectations of others before your own.

Now is the perfect festive season to revisit one of my favorite relatable representations of queer awakening ever put to screen.

As it so happens, HORROR PRESS allowed me to deconstruct how the grief-stricken arch of the salaryman parallels a reluctant journey to queer self-acceptance. You can read…

"Don't go near Cabrini Green."

This, a word of warning from my aunt who once took a wrong turn home after a night downtown. Nothing happened then, but her fear still resonated years later.

It was early 2013. I'd recently moved to Chicago for my first internship. Hearing her warning, I pulled up a map to scope out the neighborhood. Lo and behold, the job where I'd already worked for weeks was right on the Cabrini Green border.

The terrain…

"I'm like you. I prefer anything to indifference."

A challenging pick for a blind screening, to say the least. There are some aspects I really liked (largely visual) and others that left me frustrated or unfulfilled.

What strikes me is how much more this seems like a supercut of the middle seasons of a sprawling adventure series than it does a movie. We're thrust into the center of a swashbuckling saga so quickly and left with a hasty (and eugenicist)…

This is my first selection for HoopTober 7.0.

Richard Stanley's Color Out of Space draws on some quality influences. The Blob, The Thing, and Mandy come to mind. It does these all justice.

I'd been super eager to see this ever since it was first teased but didn't make it out for the limited theater run. Got extra excited when it was announced for Shudder streaming, so these past two weeks have been a practice in patience to save this…