Author Archives: nickycastro21

Few eras of cinema exhibit the traits and trappings of excessive, exploitative motives and language as the Italian “Mondo Films” and their many imitators. Heralded by the Mondo Cane series of films made by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi in the ‘60s, this subgenre of Italian films is defined by its mix of documentary andContinue reading “Forces of Excess and Exploitation in Cannibal Holocaust”

            “Can I show you this world, baby?” Lance Skiiwalker, in a deep distorted pitch asks on ScHoolboy Q’s Oxymoron bonus track His & Her Fiend. SZA’s serpentine vocals wrap around the sentiment. The constant hum of the track’s deep and unintrusive bassline is backed by a rattling of chains that echoes the pain andContinue reading “Checking in, Changing Tones”

I’m fascinated by how motivation and deadlines work. For all of my life as a young adult, I’ve gotten assignments turned in at the buzzer. Inspiration seems to be an apparition until the cold reality of the next day is staring me in my face. In some instances, like the deadline for this paper, IContinue reading “Dr. Poplove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Shonen and Drake, pt. 1”

Recently I’ve been spending time thinking about how to contend with changes in taste that come as a result of real life changes in attitude and perspective, and how to reevaluate things I love aesthetically and value deeply but can no longer appreciate in the same moral/ethical sense. When my tastes started developing in aContinue reading “On Cinematic Transgression, Real World Trauma, and John Cassavetes”

Long before individuals like Ousmane Sembene and Djibril Diop Mambety forced their way into the world of cinema and took the job of representing the continent of Africa and her peoples through their own hermeneutic, Africa was being portrayed and visualized in all the wrong ways by all of the wrong people. The most indicativeContinue reading “Cinematic Colonialism: Canonization and Prestige as Weapons of Imperialism”