Lady Horatia

I attended the Ibero-Latino Americano Film Festival for the second year in a row. And it was incredible. You can read my piece on it here. #film #cinema #filmfestival #latinamerica #latin_america #trieste #italy #movies #art #philosophy #politics #humanity medium.com/theuglymonst...

I don't think there are definitive answers to these questions but I think sometimes it's important we, as critics, ask ourselves what our role is. I wrote a piece about this, and about so much more. If you're curious, read it

"AI, while a hated fixture of today’s corporatized internet, is a tool, like any other, empowering production. But what is it producing, exactly?" #NoPaywall #Medium #movies medium.com/theuglymonst...

"The invisible line they cannot cross becomes an existential horror which threatens to exterminate the bourgeoisie." #movies medium.com/theuglymonst...

"Nolan’s protagonists reveal themselves to be the causes of their own undoing and the catalysts of the conflict that sets their journeys in motion." #TheOdyssey #philosophy #NoPaywall medium.com/theuglymonst...

"It’s not new to compare vampires to capitalists. The metaphor is right there. Vampires are soulless husks who must perpetually consume the life blood of humans to keep themselves alive." #GiftArticle medium.com/theuglymonst...

I wrote a piece on imperfect movies. It's time we took those as seriously as good movies

You can buy a huge media conglomerate with money you don't have using leveraged debt you'll never pay off and then immediately start firing its workers, but people will still say that capitalism is compatible with democracy and is capable of "reform" or "regulation"

"We have so removed, and detached, sex from any semblance of the natural in our media that it has now become common to talk about the “unnecessary sex scene”." #movies medium.com/theuglymonst...

"It is not news that the Empire in Star Wars is fascist. George Lucas modeled the empire after the Nazis, not only in its design and terminology but also in its ideology and function." #Andor #GiftArticle medium.com/theuglymonst...

"The fact that this movie has survived likely has much to do with [James] Gunn, whose involvement in producing and co-writing the story seems to have been downplayed to not stoke the right wing fanatics who attack him with glee." #movies medium.com/theuglymonst...

"...Do we want to stop believing in love and compassion? Have we become so burned by the world that we have forgotten what drives our passions, what animates our humanity?" #film medium.com/theuglymonst...

"If...there is nothing outside the text, then what are we to do with the real harm [D.W.] Griffith unleashed into the world?" #movies #Medium #society medium.com/theuglymonst...

if i ever became a film professor one of my white whales is a reverse-chronological film history lesson plan. i think starting from the present and working our way backwards would be EXPONENTIALLY friendlier to contemporary film novice undergrads than making them watch DW Griffith in week one

"...sinners are not humans. In becoming sinners they have been ontologically recalibrated and redefined as sinners, an epistemic category which sets them outside the confines of sympathy or empathy." #books #movies #religion medium.com/theuglymonst...

"The evidence shows that unhoused people are in grave and persistent danger from the punitive systems of neglect we fund and support. And yet it is unhoused people who are understood to be the danger…to us. I think a lot of us do not believe they are people." www.the-reframe.com/jordan-neely...

Our society's unfathomable cruelty to homeless people is not just morally unjustifiable, but more expensive than housing people would be. Cruelty against the homeless is an unaffordable luxury. Abandoning homeless people to avoid offending the Protestant work ethic is an unaffordable luxury.

"Can a film that has removed from the frame almost everything by which the genre is usually recognized be called cyberpunk? And even if the answer is yes, do we deserve such cyberpunk?" #movies #NoPaywall medium.com/theuglymonst...

"[Emily] Wilson begins her review by pointing out the fundamental nature of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ which most of us forget — it is already an adaptation." #movies #ChristopherNolan medium.com/theuglymonst...

Because The Ugly Monster's writers are GODLIKE, we now have 15,000 followers on Medium. Now read this think piece about The Odyssey. #NoPaywall medium.com/theuglymonst...

"Art doesn’t have an obligation to anyone, whether that be the artist or the audience. Why do we expect it to now have an obligation to us?" #movies #Medium #TheOdyssey medium.com/theuglymonst...

"Nolan is injecting mystery and humanism back into faith. The beauty of faith is that you cannot epistemically know if it is true. But faith becomes real when it is lived, breathed, felt, and in some cases, yes, seen." #TheOdyssey #movies medium.com/theuglymonst...

"What does The Odyssey tell us about the wealthy? It portrays them as a solipsistic group that maintains power through lies and brute force." #movies #Medium #NoPaywall medium.com/theuglymonst...

"Due to Marx’s praise, Marxists — especially orthodox Marxists — would take Spartacus’s name and story as a symbol of a heroic revolutionary proletariat." #movies #NoPaywall medium.com/theuglymonst...

"Rick thought he would eventually break free of the cycle by embracing evolution. Morty thought he could free himself from evolution with individual enlightenment. Instead they were both wrong. Community is what freed them." #GiftArticle medium.com/theuglymonst...

"As any description of Spartacus will tell you, the historical record has only a few lines about him, which has led historians to speculate that the Romans were embarrassed by the incident." #movies #NoPaywall medium.com/theuglymonst...

"...the newly elected President John F. Kennedy made a political spectacle of crossing the American Legion picket line at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. on February 3, 1961, effectively ending the Hollywood Blacklist." #film #Medium #NoPaywall medium.com/theuglymonst...

"Fans who engage in Database Consumption...do not engage with the media to draw literary meaning from the text. Rather, their engagement is purely consumptive in nature." #RickAndMorty #philosophy #Medium medium.com/theuglymonst...

means testing is economically and administratively inefficient, but more importantly, *it is morally reprehensible*

feels like the worst time in history to finally feel happy being alive

"What’s changed between Terminator 2 and One Battle? Exit: cyberpunk dystopian horror. Enter: the hyperreal thriller. What was once a nightmarish vision of the future is taken for granted, caricatured, and treated as more real than reality." #NoPaywall medium.com/theuglymonst...

"Can you really find Zen when you don’t have a roof to sleep under? Can you accept the loose transience of things when you don’t even have a morsel of food to eat?" #Japan #movies medium.com/theuglymonst...

This morning in Biddeford, Maine, a 26-year-old man said goodbye to his wife and daughter and left for work. Moments later he was dead, shot in the head by ICE agents, the second man ICE has killed in six days. ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.

"In a society where every act of creation must be commodified as a method of financial survival, the removal of art from a product of consumption becomes increasingly difficult." #politics #propaganda #capitalism medium.com/theuglymonst...

I wrote a piece about Luis Buñuel's film The Exterminating Angel and how it is more relevant to our present day than you might think. #movies #politics #mexico #italy #film #philosophy

"Monstrous fathers abusing children have become a common way to reimagine novels. Conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, and films reflect it back to audiences..." #NoPaywall #film #culture medium.com/theuglymonst...

"The attack on Nul Hutta lets us draw parallels between the New Republic of the Star Wars universe, and the real (purported) American republic." #politics #GiftArticle medium.com/theuglymonst...

"Jayce and Viktor justify the use of magic by saying that it could save countless lives. And yet when the magic system is finally implemented it is reserved for Piltover, and consequently the wealthy elite." #fantasy #politics #GiftArticle medium.com/theuglymonst...

"‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is a tragedy through and through. I knew it from the start. From the very second that the film began crackling onto my screen I knew what was coming." #GiftArticle #queer #horror medium.com/theuglymonst...

"The structural forces of American culture breed and induce violence." #horror #movies medium.com/theuglymonst...

Are you a writer on #Medium? Do you love movies and games and comics and books and stuff, but HATE AI slop? If so, come and write for The Ugly Monster. medium.com/theuglymonst...

as true today as when it was written

Sometimes you can’t think of anything good to write, and that’s a perfectly normal thing a lot of writers struggle with. It just means you committed a great sin and displeased The Lord. It means He has punished you by cutting you off from The Source

This happened years ago with the death of Jeff Lockhart, and it should have led to the dismantling of this juggernaut of reckless corporate greed

This isn’t some kind of anti parent remark, by the way. It’s just interesting that everyone who has a kid essentially becomes a charity dedicated to one person, such that broader ideas of social goods are easier to dismiss and personal fortunes can be more easily justified

A good editor is the perfect combination of ruthless and kind. Professionalism is the ability to recognize that writer and editor are on the same team, and that means honesty.

it's very frustrating to see everyone hopping on the "national debt" discourse in complete sincerity. buddy we are still "paying off" debt from the civil war. national economies are not your household budget PLEASE stop falling for bush era propaganda that wasn't even that convincing in 2004