Best and Worst Films of 2018

March 18, 2019
Contemporary Film, Reviews
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I’m a little late to the game, but here are a few films that stood out in 2018, for both good reasons and bad. As usual, I divide my best picks by exhibition space, Cineplex or other, respectively. A number of Netflix-produced films or their distributed films made my list, perhaps not a surprise if we’ve been following film criticism.

In no particular order:

 

Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse

Best Cineplex-exhibited Films

  • Mission Impossible: Fallout
  • The Favourite
  • BlacKkKlansman (probably best at the Cineplex)
  • Isle of Dogs
  • Hereditary
  • A Quiet Place
  • Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse
  • Avengers: Infinity War
  • Deadpool 2
  • Solo: A Star Wars Story

Best Films Exhibited/Distributed Elsewhere

  • The Other Side of the Wind
  • The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
  • Cam (see my interview with the crew)
  • Happy as Lazarro
  • Zama
  • Thunder Road
  • Shoplifters (probably my pick for best of the year)
  • A Fantastic Woman
  • Sorry to Bother You
  • You Were Never Really Here

Worst Films

  • Roma
  • First Man
  • In Fabric
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp
  • Halloween
  • Game Night
  • Fifty Shades Freed

One dollar gets you in!: historical resonance and online solo girls circa 2005

June 13, 2018
Film Theory, Pornography, Published Essays
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In this article, with the aid of film and media theories, I provide an overview of ‘solo girl’ pornography, a category of mainstream heterosexual porn with online ubiquity. I discuss the historical relevance of this subgenre in specifically technological and affective terms, taking a cue from Susanna Paasonen’s work on tactile engagements with online pornography. Solo girl performances are preserved in still images, videos, and webcams and consist of striptease, masturbation, and girl-on-girl sex. I outline how each of these types of porn content functions within the niche and how users access the materials. Following this, I discuss the role of the online forum Free Ones and its significance for promoting solo girl content and fostering relationships amongst pornophiles. I conclude with some remarks about the lasting resonance of early twenty-first-century solo performers and consider the role of archiving vintage online porn.

Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema out now

October 12, 2017
Contemporary Film, Film Theory, New Extreme, Pornography, Published Essays
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cover

 

LINK

This volume re-evaluates theories of genre and spectatorship in light of a critic-defined tendency in recent art cinema, coined ‘extreme cinema’. In Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema, Bordun argues that the films of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas and French director Catherine Breillat expand generic classifications. Bordun contends that their films make it apparent that genre is not established prior to the viewing of a work but is recollected and assembled by spectators in ways that matter for them in both personal and experiential terms. The author deploys contemporary film theories on the senses, both phenomenological and affect theory, and partakes in close readings of the films’ forms and narratives. The book thus adds to the present literature on extreme cinema and film theory, yet sets itself apart by fully deploying genre theory alongside the methodological and stylistic approaches of Stanley Cavell, Vivian Sobchack, Laura U. Marks, and Eugenie Brinkema.