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Peter Mikulski | Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Since its release, people have harped on “Call Me by Your Name” for the seven-year age gap between Elio and Oliver, its enamored 17- and 24-year-old protagonists. Some fans make the pedantic argument that such a relationship is completely above board according to Italian law, but there are stronger defense cases to be made. Sure,
Peter Mikulski | Monday, September 18, 2023
“Taxi Driver,” “American Psycho,” “Clockwork Orange” — men tend to lump movies like these into one post-facto category: movies that make them say “he’s literally me,” “he’s just like me ‘fr’” or some other variation on that theme. At first, Bertolucci’s “The Conformist” seems like it might fit this mold. Our protagonist is Marcello Clerici,
Peter Mikulski | Monday, September 11, 2023
“Ubi sunt?” or “Where are they?” medieval poetry constantly asks. As historian Ronald Hutton puts it, in the Early Middle Ages, Europeans lived in wooden huts surrounded by “imposing stone ruins of Roman towns, villas, fortresses and factories” which “awed and troubled” them. They felt a profound “sense of melancholy and disorientation provoked by a
Peter Mikulski | Tuesday, September 5, 2023
Last Thursday, the Browning Cinema at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center screened “Il Decameron” by director Pier Paolo Pasolini. The movie adapts nine of the 100 short stories in the original “Decameron,” a collection of tales by medieval Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio. When discussing medieval art with sex jokes and poop gags, the critic is
Peter Mikulski | Thursday, August 31, 2023
“Red, White & Royal Blue” is schlock. It’s a rom-com about a forbidden homosexual romance between the son of the American president and the grandson of the British king. The premise is awesome, but because the script sprints through some plot points while lingering randomly on others, it feels like poorly paced fan fiction. The