If you’ve read my stuff for any length of time, you know I’ve been (maybe too long?) a one trick pony. A movie is released, I review that movie, and the world spins on. That’s what a film critic does, right? Right, but it occurs to me that I could offer y’all a little more […]

By and large, I’m not a fan of seances. I understand the appeal, though. There’s something intensely alluring about the idea of talking to the dead, of reaching beyond this veil of tears and communicating with loved ones.* I understand the why, as well. A need to say goodbye. A need to ask a question. […]

Joni Mitchell famously wrote, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” I suspect that sentiment will become even more commonplace over the next few years. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the only constant in the universe is change, and to wish for the present to be frozen in amber is, at […]

These days, a lot of people proclaim with absolute certainty that they know where God is and what God is doing. They’re positive that, on July 13 of last year, God altered the trajectory of an assassin’s bullet and saved Donald Trump at a rally. The fact that God didn’t see fit to save rally […]

Do I believe in America? That’s a good question. While I wasn’t raised in a particularly patriotic household, I grew up in Reagan’s 1980s and graduated high school in the early years of Clinton’s 1990s. During those formative years, I was told that hard work would pull you up the socioeconomic ladder, that in every […]

It’s true we’re in a transition period for movies, and I have no idea what that transition will lead to. I’ve seen gloom and doom headlines about the creeping death of theaters, and I’ve also seen hopeful pieces about people re-prioritizing theaters. I’ve heard anecdotes about studios using A.I. to replace creatives, and anecdotes about […]

The thing about biopics is, they’re hard to make. If you’re a filmmaker and want to tell a story about a famous person, common wisdom says that there are one of two ways to do it. The first is to portray the entirety of a famous person’s life and try to capture their essence. Oliver […]

One of the joys of independent film is the sense of risk. Studio films have always, to a degree, played it safe. These days they’re even more risk averse, due to the flood of executives from the finance and tech industries. The majority of those people have very little interest in making art or pushing […]

If you know anything about the 1922 silent horror film Nosferatu, it’s probably the iconic image of actor Max Schreck. In his role as the vampire Count Orlok, Schreck didn’t play a suave nobleman decked out in evening wear. He plays a monster, a near-feral creature with a ratlike visage. Nosferatu features one of the […]

Tell me good things don’t emerge from big-budget studio franchises. On the one hand, a good friend of mine has nothing but contempt for cinematic tentpoles. She sneers at the MCU, rolls her eyes at Star Wars, thinks the Jurassic Park/World films are a fool’s errand, and believes the Mission: Impossible franchise is little more […]