By Isaac Handelman

Simultaneously the epitome of Marvel's hypercapitalist formula and a thrilling iteration of it, "Spider-Man: Far From Home" is, by and large, a highly enjoyable viewing experience. This entry finds Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and pals venturing to Europe for a school vacation. They end up lilypad-hopping across the continent in tandem with Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), inadvertently nicknamed Mysterio, who's presented as an extra-dimensional crusader attempting to combat some apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo. For good measure, Beck has pulled old friends Nick Fury and Maria Hill along for his ride which - surprise! - turns out to be quite deceitful. Interestingly, "From From Home" is aware of its own ludicrous blockbuster trappings. Beck is a cartoon megalomaniac, sure; Fury and Hill realize that, and acknowledge so on-screen in an amusing exchange. Other side-characters, like Peter’s hapless teachers (Martin Starr and J.B. Smoove), best friend Ned (Jacob Bata...

I am not a musician, but I would like to find my music. I would like to write my music. I want it to flow from me. I want to care, and I don’t want it to stop. I want to find my muse, or my amusement. I want to write my music. I don’t care much if others listen. I just want to find my music, and to write it. Is there a trick, or do I just need to stick with something? Will I start to care, will I get invested, if I stay invested? I don’t want to force it, but I don’t want to ignore it. I don’t know how to evoke it, or if it’s even there. If it’s not, I’d like to put it there. If I can’t find my music, I’d like to make it. To create it. I don’t know how, but I’ll try to figure it out. I sure don't want it to pass me by.

Sometimes opening a window helps. Otherwise, it can be suffocating. Serenade, sweetly. I think these things as I walk down the street, toward the place where the Goblin lives. That disgusting little man, that vile, unworthy scum… he revolts me. I have arranged to meet him. I regret this decision. Fee, fie, fo, fum. He sits under his bridge. Fuck him. That troll, that gross, gangly, ghastly, ghoul. I’d spit on him if I could. That would make the meeting an awkward pain, though. Imagine that, my spit, coating his face. A barrier between me and him. Perhaps that’d make it more bearable, I think to myself. I laugh to myself. I crinkle my nose and close my eyes, but the light still penetrates them. The street is wet. My shoes are wet. Soon, my socks will be wet. Then, my feet will get wet. And then I will be a soggy fuck, trodding flatly through these dull streets, uncomfortable, barely mobile, slowed by the stringy, soaking fabric between my sickly skin and the wet ground. I’ll ge...

I just made a mistake. I screwed up. It was my first chance to provide my camp with a major upgrade, something that might improve the livelihoods of my compatriots, those I’ve come to think of as my friends and family. Lured in by the promise of upgrades to my satchel, I opted to buy an expensive set of leather working tools, dropping around one hundred dollars from my personal savings (more than half of what I had accrued since the disastrous failed robbery) as well as the entirety of the camp’s collective funds on the endeavor. As soon as I’d made the purchase, I regretted it. Buyer’s remorse in a world without refunds. A simple reality dawned on me: I had just chosen to purchase a handful of tools in order to improve my satchel’s capacity to hold herbs, ammunition, food, and other assorted goods. I’d never been out roaming the frontier lands and wanted for extra space on my person before; rather, I had been seduced by the luxurious promise of an upgrade to my personal abilities. I c...

I am not qualified to speak about the “best” films of 2018, because I have seen only a tiny handful of the myriad, wonderful films that released this year. I wish this were not the case. I wish I could say I’d seen every worthy film, from Shoplifters to Eighth Grade , Sorry to Bother You to Leave No Trace . But the truth is, I haven’t. I am a student and a freelance writer, and I do not have the time nor the disposable income that would allow me have a comprehensive knowledge of 2018 in film; the films I have seen are disproportionately American. But I still would like to share my favorite films of the year, however incomplete my filmic experience has been, and however much my feelings might change as I continue to absorb 2018’s cinema in the new year. So, here is my woefully incomplete portrait of a year that, for all its political toxicity and global violence, at least offered up some great movies. I’ll be doing my best to add one new entry on each of the last five days of this...

This article contains relatively major spoilers for all seasons of 'Channel Zero'. Nick Acosta’s Channel Zero is a show with so much to offer. At its highest points, it's the scariest thing on television, probably by a long shot. It can be so adept at its get-under-your-skin-and-make-it-crawl approach so as to rival the most unsettling sequences in popular horror media. But then it goes off the rails. Off the deep end. It takes things too far, and instead of going lovably bonkers, it just gets boring. This is not an isolated occurrence — I'd argue that it's happened, to an extent, in every season of this underappreciated SyFy anthology series, each incarnation of which adapts a different creepypasta story from the dark corners of the web. In the first season, Candle Cove , a blood-curdling opening scene gives way to a genuinely chilling mystery surrounding a shady children's TV show and a creepy, clicky, child-snatching tooth monster... and then the toot...

One cannot separate the art from the artist; they are deeply intertwined. To understand why, consider this scenario: We choose to study the films of Roman Polanski in-depth, without considering the fact that, while in his forties, the director raped a thirteen year old girl. On the surface, the argument is simple: we wish only to consider the art, the form of the films, the narrative content and the thematic subtext. We do not wish to get caught up in the personal life of the artist, however egregious his actions might have been, because such a line of inquiry is not relevant to a survey of the art itself. But then, we should surely be able to teach a similar class on the visual art of Adolf Hitler, who was famously rejected from an art school years before overseeing the mass murder of more than 11 million innocent people. Of course, that would be impossible. With the weight that the name "Hitler" carries, how could one possibly teach a class on his art without address...