The Browsing Effect is movie that explores how technology has changed the way we begin and behave in relationships. With dating apps like Tinder or Bumble, it makes it easier than ever to meet someone. But of course there is a cost to all these apps, since it brings a measure of casualness into the…
Red Room starts somewhere in Dublin, as a woman named Kyra (Amy Kelly, “Red Rock” TV series) walks home alone at night. A lost cellphone rings on the tarmac. She picks it up. Distracted, she’s grabbed from behind and bundled into a van. She wakes up in a room, locked in chains, along with two…
In comparison, the western world’s absurd fascination with social media, online celebrity/fandom, and socioeconomic gain in virtual reality seems to take a noticeable backseat to the immense obsession that is China’s ultra-live streaming epidemic. Filmmaker Hao Wu’s tellingly spry and insightful documentary People’s Republic of Desire is an involving expose of this technological addiction gone…
Few activities encompass the ominous banality of modern times like scouring the Internetscape; scrolling, swiping, clicking through apps and websites representing our digital lifebloods. Of course, we are all prospectors of that ever-expanding and blindingly confining world that is also, strangely, still very much in its infancy. We’re also constantly learning how to adapt to…
Entertainment guru Tyler Perry plants his fingertips on yet another toothless comedic concoction that has more cockeyed misfires than Madea’s gun rack display. In Perry’s latest baseless romantic comedy Nobody’s Fool, more of the same formula applies; tiresome stereotypes accompanied by forced melodrama and transparent seeds of recycled zaniness. Clearly, it has been a reliable…
Lives online, lives offline. Activities that only happen because web cameras connect us to an anonymous multitude. What happens online may stay online, or overlap with the “real world.” What happens when a person is one thing on the Internet and another in the outside world? The questions around such alternative lives are pressing concerns…
When I reviewed the first “Unfriended” film in 2015, I described it as a time capsule; an inside joke between its creators and anyone familiar with the technology it uniquely and realistically integrated that would only fully pay off if/when, years later, its original audience watched younger, uninitiated viewers try to understand it outside of…
