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“A haunted-house film set in a spaceship” — that’s how Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking science-fiction/horror mash-up Alien was characterized when it was released in 1979. It’s not a bad description, actually. Then James Cameron came aboard for Aliens and upped the velocity factor, essentially turning the 1986 sequel into a roller coaster dipping and corkscrewing on an extraterrestrial planet. These templates set the twin standards for everything else the franchise has given us: Filmmakers either set the dial to creepy-crawly chills or breakneck thrills. Even after everyone’s favorite Xenomorph...

Anchored by Richard Linklater’s exceptional feature-length “Hometown Prison,” HBO’s God Save Texas may only be a three-part anthology docuseries, but in those three parts, it manages to be wide-ranging, timely and vitally important.

While the inspiration is Lawrence Wright’s book of the same title, and the focus is the Lone Star State, the template set by Linklater, Alex Stapleton and Iliana Sosa could be applied to personal/political hybrid storytelling delving into the fractured identities of all 50 states and the artists who call them home.

Or maybe we just need more seasons of God Save Texas — premiering at Sundance before coming to HBO on Feb. 27 and 28 — since Texas represents so much of what 21st century America is likely to look like moving forward. A red state with blue cities, in which the ideology and voting interests of each demographic are far more complicated than “Democrat” or “Republican,...

Exclusive. When the alternative book of film trivia is written, a page will be dedicated to the influence of Leonard Nimoy’s paranormal-themed late-’70s TV show In Search of… on director siblings. It was here that Albert and Allen Hughes first heard about Britain’s most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper, beginning an obsession with Victorian London that resulted in their 2001 horror-drama From Hell. And for David and Nathan Zellner, the cultural impact was very similar.

“We loved that show,” recalls David. “As kids, there wasn’t much out there, that we were exposed to, that covered those sorts of things. They’d cover the Loch Ness monster, everything. I remember one about plants, wondering if they were able to think and what kind of music they’d like to listen to. They got really obscure with some of the subjects, but we loved that show. We loved the vibe of it.

In the NYPD Blue Season One episode “Tempest in a C-Cup,” cop Andy Sipowicz and prosecutor Sylvia Costas wind up on an impromptu dinner date. To call the occasion unexpected would be a wild understatement, as we were introduced to the characters at the very start of the series with a drunken, rampaging Sipowicz grabbing his crotch and calling Sylvia a “pissy little bitch.” But Andy is sober now, and Sylvia finds herself charmed by his company. After he tells her about the aquarium of saltwater tropical fish he keeps in his apartment,...

“Ninja rap” might just be the Rosetta Stone of early ‘90s pop culture. For only during this brief and extraordinary moment could a musical act like Vanilla Ice in supersized shoulder pads—and with a slicked-back pompadour that made it look as if he just stepped out of the shower—reign supreme as the fastest-selling hip hop artist ever. Also only in that same context could he then be convinced to appear in a movie where he’d dance on stage with full-grown men wearing elaborate puppeteer costumes that made them resemble a beloved Saturday morning cartoon show.

Yet in 1991 all these things happened, and they were all massive hits. Truly, then, the third act of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Secret of the Ooze is a convergence point for everything gaudy and overwrought in the American zeitgeist of its era. And it’s time to stop pretending like that’s a bad thing.

by Cláudio Alves

We live in a time when what was once conjecture is becoming a perilous reality, dreams of advanced tech crashing into the nightmare of actual artificial intelligence. Facing these newborn terrors of our digital age, the Criterion Channel looks back. Spanning fifty years of film history, a collection of 17 titles investigates how cineastes have approached the topic of AI, from decades when it was just narrative device or metaphor, to our present state of sci-fi as a direct response to concrete real-world anxieties.

This cinematic tasting menu of techno-cinema offers many gustative possibilities, though none more surprising than Lynn Hershman-Leeson's Teknolust. Criminally underseen upon its 2002/2003 release, the unorthodox comedy posits a scenario where Tilda Swinton plays four roles, mad scientist Rosetta Stone and her three cybernetic creations cum clones – Ruby, Marinne, and Olive…...