The Dragon Rises Yet Again
September 2, 2020
Reexamining the triumphs and tragedies of Bruce Lee.
John Semley
John Semley is a writer and researcher based in Philadelphia.
Brief Encounters
June 1, 2020
Rethinking inscrutability in two recent festival hits.
Against Virtuosity
February 12, 2020
Recently, idling away an especially rainy Saturday in January, I found myself sinking a solid six hours into Sony Interactive Entertainment’s 2018 blockbuster game God of War: a stupid-violent farrago of Greek and Norse mythology notable for employing a fixed, ...
The Action is the Juice
January 14, 2020
Uncut Gems and Dark Waters crystallize how being alive today feels.
The Leftovers
December 10, 2019
In The Irishman, mob opulence is eclipsed by ugliness.
You’re the Man for Us
November 19, 2019
The un-cynical irony of Mister America and On Cinema
Cyberpunk is Dead
Held annually in a downtown L.A. convention center so massive and glassy that it served as a futurist backdrop for the 1993 sci-fi action film Demolition Man and as an intergalactic “Federal Transport Hub” in Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 space-fascism satire Starship Troopers, ...
So Metaphorical
October 24, 2019
Parasite, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes (in a reportedly unanimous decision) and was (less unanimously) a finalist for the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, begins in a dead-end.
The film opens in a dingy sub-basement at the ass-end of a ...