This has not been a good year for horror films thus far. It's not that big of a deal, as there's usually one major genre that suffers a lapse in quality every year, but for 2023 it's been particularly grim. There is the odd bright spot, like Evil Dead Rise (which I didn't see, as … Continue reading The Hand of Fate – Talk to Me
There have been a lot of movies over the last decade based on consumer products. Most of them are thinly-veiled, feature-length commercials. But every once in a while, a film breaks through and becomes an essential part of our cultural conversation, like The Lego Movie. We can safely add Greta Gerwig's Barbie to that short … Continue reading Life in Plastic – Barbie
Christopher Nolan has made his name as a filmmaker through two basic avenues. One is his Dark Knight trilogy of movies featuring Batman. The other is in complex narratives that play on the elasticity of cinema itself to tell high-concept stories out of sequence or in ways that mess with basic timeline structure (Memento, Inception, … Continue reading Theory and Praxis – Oppenheimer
When I was in the sixth grade, I participated in my first school play. It was an inane "musical" called The Case of the Missing Part of Speech. I shit you not. The whole "show" lasts for about 30 minutes, involves the cast collectively singing ditties about nouns, verbs, and prepositions (our production actually cut … Continue reading Next in Show – Theater Camp
Whatever your personal opinions may be when it comes to Tom Cruise as a person - and believe me, I have some issues - it's still important to note that over the last few years, he's been the driving force in saving the theatrical model of the film industry. When he insisted that Top Gun: … Continue reading The Human Element – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
There's an overarching theme in Joy Ride about the uncertainty and insecurity that people experience when it comes to their cultural heritage and personal identity. Throughout the course of the riotous road trip romp, the emotional core always comes back to the idea of figuring out who you are and where you came from, both … Continue reading Identity Slapsticks – Joy Ride
If you're a regular reader, you know that I have a few default settings when it comes to how I judge movies. Like any human being I'm not always 100% consistent in my takes, as one, there are exceptions to every rule, and two, sometimes I just forget in the moment depending on how a … Continue reading A Shot Across Disney’s Bow – Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken
When I was 12 years old, my family and I took a Spring Break vacation to Florida to go to Disney World. It was one of the greatest weeks of my life, and now that both my mother and the close family friend who was the impetus for the trip are gone, I hold on … Continue reading Old Man Yells at Klaus – Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
One of the most enjoyable trends in recent cinema is the leitmotif of self-parody that also enhances the very tropes that are being aped. Perhaps the best examples are Knives Out and Glass Onion, which send up the conventions of the whodunit while creating genuinely ingenious whodunits. But it's not limited to just that one … Continue reading Game Night – The Blackening
Back in 2006, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan released what is arguably his worst movie, Lady in the Water. Derided for being incredibly self-indulgent, the project was rightly lambasted for Shyamalan's sanctimonious take on art, writing, and criticism, in which he essentially staged a cinematic hissy fit due to negative reactions to his previous work. He … Continue reading The Play’s the Thing – Asteroid City
I Actually Paid To See This 