Even when this was first announced I was pretty sure it wasn't gonna be comparable in quality to PWSA's incredible Retribution -> Pompeii -> Final Chapter run that preceded it, but I still imagined that I'd be going to see it on opening night as I did for RE:TFC, and to be watching it on my laptop a good couple months after its general release feels frustratingly anticlimactic. Four years between movies is really not a very dramatic gap for…

How can Americans relate to Europe? When you grow up in the historyless, cultureless suburbs, how can you relate to a place as old as Venice in any sort of meaningful way? The 15:17 to Paris is hyper-aware of the banality of tourism; Anthony Sadler's love of the selfie stick is only a (slightly) exaggerated portrayal of what every American tourist in Europe does and feels, a profound sense of surreality (my friend upon arriving in Dubrovnik: "this is a…

The erasure of ethnic and racial identities by capitalist individualism. In a recent interview, the Safdies call Howard "heir to this rich history" of Jewish materialism, the desire to rise above the historical marginalization of his community. But in embracing capitalism Howard must necessarily reject community and family connections, by becoming lost in the flow of global capital Howard becoming atomized, a narcissist in the most fundamental way. This is not a Faustian rise-and-fall, because there is no devil and…