I know, I owe you an explanation. A laundry movie is a film that you can see in the theater, though you probably shouldn’t. Instead, it’s a film that plays in the background while you’re folding laundry, making out, checking social media, or doing essentially anything else. You can check out for a while, but upon hearing a quip or an explosion, your attention can return to the screen and you can easily pick the thread of the story back up. As long as there has been Hollywood, there have been laundry movies. Nobody means to make a laundry movie, it just kinda happens sometimes.... Read More

From 1978 to 1990, Andrei Chikatilo murdered at least 52 women and children in Soviet Russia. Putting aside the grim fact that it’s fiendishly difficult to capture a serial killer under any circumstances, Chikatilo enjoyed a unique advantage. It was widely believed in Soviet circles that murder in general, and serial murder in particular, was a uniquely Western phenomenon that couldn’t possibly occur in the USSR. Blinded by ideology, investigators instead persecuted innocent homosexuals, believing homosexuality to be a dangerous mental illness. Good thing nothing like that ever happens... Read More