Screen Speck’s Top Films of 2022

This particular year is filled with refreshing and bold new films from newcomer filmmakers like Aftersun’s Charlotte Wells to veterans Todd Field and Park Chan-wook.
Lonely Girls: How Being Unseen Creates Horror

Through characters like these three, horror shows how it uses loneliness to warp the world around us and turn it monstrous.
This Spooky Season, A Primer for Short Horror Films

Through body horror, we confront our physical trappings and limitations. Through psychological horror, we confront that which we simply cannot control.
Five Years Later, The Sublime Desperation of ‘First Reformed’

A half-decade after its release, Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” is more timely than ever – in both its despair and its glimmer of hope.
‘Showgirls,’ Camp, and the Making of a Queer Cult Classic

Why has Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas’ 1995 cult classic “Showgirls” endured as a queer cult classic? Not because it’s because the film is secretly a high art masterpiece (it isn’t), but because it embraces camp with both arms and then kisses it on every cheek.
The Top 10 Most Memorable Depictions of Depression in Film

The more we dodge the subject, the more alienating it feels when we do feel depressed, because we start to feel like no one else feels this way – so we seek out representation in art.
Yes, I’m a Wanda Apologist – And She Deserves One (Feature)

Marvel villainizing Wanda’s desperate desire to be a mother says more about the studio’s trivialization of motherhood than anything to do with Wanda’s character.
No Mother Is an Island: Dismantling Myths of Self-Sufficient Motherhood in ‘About a Boy’

Although it came out twenty years ago this month, ‘About a Boy’ remains one of the best and most sensitive mainstream depictions of a reimagined system of care in support of mothers.
Motherhood in Cinema: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Arguably, the melodrama is where we have found better, more multidimensional portrayals of motherhood.
Mother Martyr: Sarah Connor & ‘The Terminator’

Sarah Connor’s body and behavior remake what movies think a mother is.