John Semley's posts

After a decade-plus break from filmmaking, Tim Robbins is returning to the director’s chair: According to The…

Given director Atom Egoyan’s tendency to gravitate towards emotionally complex family dramas dealing with grief and…

Pop culture can be as forbidding as it is inviting, particularly in areas that invite geeky obsession: The more…

Metal, hardcore, punk, noise: Music shouldn’t always be easy on the ears. Each month, Loud unearths some of the…

1. The Bangles, Gilmore Girls
When a TV character suddenly expresses extreme devotion to a singer or band he or she…

1-2. Sylvester Stallone, F.I.S.T. (1978); First Blood (1982)
Sylvester Stallone is the actor’s equivalent of a…

Metal, hardcore, punk, noise: Music shouldn’t always be easy on the ears. Each month, Loud unearths some of the…

1. Jerry Lewis in France
Jerry Lewis used to be one of the biggest stars in America, until America got tired of him,…

When Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth took the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2009, it turned the eyes of the world…

1. Jackie Gleason, You’re In The Picture
It’s rare enough for an entertainer to apologize for a gaffe or a bomb, but…

By the director’s own admission, Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop is, in its heart of cyborg hearts, “a Christ story”—the…

1. Robert Pollard/Guided By Voices 
The remarkably prolific Robert Pollard has a seemingly inexhaustible ability to…

Metal, hardcore, punk, noise: Music shouldn’t always be easy on the ears. Each month, Loud unearths some of the…

1. Apocalypse Now (2001)
A director’s cut in the letter but not the spirit of the term, Apocalypse Now Redux features…

1. Apocalypse Now (1979)
It’s hard to say Apocalypse Now Redux is “better” than Apocalypse Now, since the original is…

Former Sex Pistol, punk icon, and butter salesman John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) has a new record. Titled This Is…

1. The Brady kids’ “Time To Chaaaaaange,” The Brady Bunch (1972)
The whole phenomenon of a movie or TV show trying to…

In or out of metal’s seedy musical ghetto, there are few records as epically conceived or grandly ambitious as Sleep’…

1. Friday Night Lights’ Landry-kills-a-guy arc
The rumor mill had NBC interfering with the terrific, reasonably…

Punk, hardcore, metal, noise: Music shouldn’t always be easy on the ears. Each month, Loud unearths some of the…