The world without fascism that Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso envisions is both plausible and attainable; it simply has to start small, and start somewhere, like any worthwhile idea.
PositionFrequent Contributor
JoinedDecember 8, 2020
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Alexander B. Joy is a writer from New Hampshire who holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of Legend of the River King (Boss Fight Books, 2026) and the editor of Flaxman Low: Occult Detective (MIT Press, 2026). Find him on Bluesky at @aeneas-nin.bsky.social, and see more of his work at alexanderbjoy.com.
At heart, Don Hertzfeldt’s ME—a half-hour, lyrics-free animated sci-fi musical of apocalyptic tenor—wants us to wrestle with the question of how to reconcile being unable to talk to one another about how we interpret things, and what we find meaningful in them.
For all its discussions of morals and metaphysics, Stalker is ultimately a film about criticism—not in the sense of simply pronouncing something wasteful or worthwhile, but in the explicative sense, wherein interpreting an object or experience imparts a particular way of seeing.
Chris Marker's La Jetée is less tragic than instructive, exploring our incapacity to alter the past in order to urge us to come to terms with what has been.
Paul Newman portrays someone whose love is all-encompassing, who loves despite and loves because. And it’s from this love that his Stage Manager is able to draw his remarkable combination of power and vulnerability.
On The Secret World of Arrietty, teenage despair, wanting what you can't have, and being wanted when you can't be had.
The story of Tales From Earthsea is a chronicle of a misused director and the parade of misunderstandings that torpedoed his debut, nearly taking his career with it.
A father and daughter dance in the ruins of the New Jersey boardwalk.