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Humans have always had a complicated relationship with weather. Ancient cultures prayed and made offerings to gods in hopes of receiving conditions conducive to growing crops. Adverse weather, then, w…
Humans have always h…
Humans have always had a complicated relationship with weather. Ancient cultures prayed and made offerings to gods in hopes of receiving conditions conducive to growing crops. Adverse weather, then, was often interpreted as displeasure on behalf of those same beings—a punishment for failing to observe proper rituals. It doesn’t take a history scholar to understand this impulse. Weather, now as then, is both an enemy and ally. On one hand, it provides everything from the raw material for food—sunlight driving photosynthesis, wind the primary method of plants spreading their seeds—to …
Sometimes, writing about art and theater feels a lot like falling down the proverbial rabbit hole as I try to find the angle to write about wandering through a haunted-theater immersive experience, ge…
Sometimes, writing a…
Sometimes, writing about art and theater feels a lot like falling down the proverbial rabbit hole as I try to find the angle to write about wandering through a haunted-theater immersive experience, getting splashed in a Halloween horror show in the basement of a spaghetti emporium, sweating through a DIY D&D in a comic shop, savoring (har har!) Sweeney Todd’s enraged high notes, and trying to quiet my howling dog in a public house. I’ve found myself in some odd and awkward scenarios. To update the metaphor, writing this column is a lot like drunk-clicking through an endless algorithm o…
Jessie Hanson
January 8, 2020
I don’t often do dual reviews. The main reason for that is, well, focus. If I’m going to write about a movie, I want to drill down into it a little. It’s tough to do that if you have two films t…
I don’t often do d…
I don’t often do dual reviews. The main reason for that is, well, focus. If I’m going to write about a movie, I want to drill down into it a little. It’s tough to do that if you have two films that have nothing to do with each other by subject or theme. Somewhere out there is a critic that can masterfully weave together the similarities between Ghoulies and Anatomy of a Murder. I got news for you - that someone ain’t me. Once in a great while, though, a couple of films come along that dovetail together nicely. Since as far as I know I’m not your Dad, I can’t tell you which order…
Tim Brennan
July 22, 2024
Is nuance dead in America? I don’t think so, but it is apparently very, very sleepy. Everything is binary these days. The enchiladas you ate were either a gastronomical miracle straight from Saint M…
Is nuance dead in Am…
Is nuance dead in America? I don’t think so, but it is apparently very, very sleepy. Everything is binary these days. The enchiladas you ate were either a gastronomical miracle straight from Saint Martha* or a meal of such blistering incompetence that it will summon Gordon Ramsay to wreak culinary vengeance. Same goes for movies, naturally. Marvel movies either destroyed cinema and made Martin Scorsese cry, or they single-handedly saved movie theaters from COVID. Hollywood blockbusters are the worst kind of soulless dreck. Independent films are nothing more than cynical devices for pander…
Tim Brennan
July 15, 2024
If you watch enough movies, a few things start to happen. One of those is that you begin to recognize a filmmaker’s voice. You’ll notice the cheery pessimism of David Fincher, the slick wistfulnes…
If you watch enough …
If you watch enough movies, a few things start to happen. One of those is that you begin to recognize a filmmaker’s voice. You’ll notice the cheery pessimism of David Fincher, the slick wistfulness of Steven Spielberg, the aggressive goth-osity of Tim Burton, and the puckish rage of Spike Lee. It’s true that some directors tweak their style to fit the material. But the Bigelows, the Gerwigs, the Scorseses of the world have, like criminals, a certain signature to their work. Once you start to recognize those voices, you’ll inevitably discover that you don’t like some of them. Dozen…
Tim Brennan
July 8, 2024
There’s a moment late in the new indie drama Mickey Hardaway where we hear repeated audio from newscasts. Each anchor uses nearly the same phrasing when they say, “a Black male, mid-twenties, with…
There’s a moment l…
There’s a moment late in the new indie drama Mickey Hardaway where we hear repeated audio from newscasts. Each anchor uses nearly the same phrasing when they say, “a Black male, mid-twenties, with a gun.” That phrasing conjures a mental picture. That mental picture is the first link in a chain, one that ends in decisions, policies, the pulling of a trigger. A certain politician, who shall remain nameless, responded to a mental picture similar to that with the phrase, “superpredators. Another politician, also one who will remain nameless, wrote, “I recently watched a newscast try…
Tim Brennan
July 1, 2024
A little research tells me a chunk of biker gangs remain involved with the drug trade, weapons dealing, and other criminal activity. Hasn’t it always been that way? Haven’t bikers always been the …
A little research te…
A little research tells me a chunk of biker gangs remain involved with the drug trade, weapons dealing, and other criminal activity. Hasn’t it always been that way? Haven’t bikers always been the modern day equivalent of the Mongol hordes, sweeping across the American landscapes like leather-clad locusts? They’re nothing but a bunch of criminals, right? Biker gangs originally entered into American culture with Marlon Brando in 1953’s The Wild One. When his character Johnny is asked what he’s rebelling against, he replies, “Whaddaya got?” From there, bikers started the Americ…
Tim Brennan
June 24, 2024
Like the MCU, Pixar has been in a bit of a tough spot as of late. Initially, they were arguably the gold standard in family entertainment, perhaps even more so than Disney Animation itself. Whether yo…
Like the MCU, Pixar …
Like the MCU, Pixar has been in a bit of a tough spot as of late. Initially, they were arguably the gold standard in family entertainment, perhaps even more so than Disney Animation itself. Whether you saw Toy Story, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Up, or Inside Out, you were virtually guaranteed a film that was clever, funny, and profoundly humanistic. Then, things began to change. Pixar’s film Onward was released in early February of 2020, and unless you’ve been severely memoryholed, you’ll remember that there was a spot of unpleasantness during that year. Along with killing around on…
Tim Brennan
June 17, 2024
You can’t understand how massive Will Smith was, not unless you were there. These days, he’s still ubiquitous. My son, Liam, knows who he is, as do his friends. Will Smith is, to his generation, t…
You can’t understa…
You can’t understand how massive Will Smith was, not unless you were there. These days, he’s still ubiquitous. My son, Liam, knows who he is, as do his friends. Will Smith is, to his generation, the same way that Frank Sinatra was to mine. He’s a celebrity, only one that isn’t a cultural driver the way he used to be. By that I mean, in the early 90s, Will Smith was coming off a successful music career and television career. He set his sights on movie stardom, and holy God, did he achieve it. To my mind, Men in Black is a perfect blockbuster. Independence Day remains beloved to a lot…
Tim Brennan
June 10, 2024
When is a hit not a hit? When it’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. We’ll get into the review specifics in a moment, but before we do, please allow me to paint you a picture. I didn’t see this film at a…
When is a hit not a …
When is a hit not a hit? When it’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. We’ll get into the review specifics in a moment, but before we do, please allow me to paint you a picture. I didn’t see this film at a critic’s screening, surrounded by a bunch of egghead movie nerds like me. Like a real American, I paid good money* to see vehicular carnage projected in pristine digital imagery. To clarify, I paid good money to see it in a theater. In what was essentially an empty theater. It’s true, when my kid & I saw the film, we saw it on a Wednesday afternoon. Normal people are working during t…
Tim Brennan
June 3, 2024
If you ever want to really check your humility level, try writing about a subject you’re ignorant on. I like to think of myself as a relatively intelligent person. Want to talk about politics or cur…
If you ever want to …
If you ever want to really check your humility level, try writing about a subject you’re ignorant on. I like to think of myself as a relatively intelligent person. Want to talk about politics or current events? I can handle myself okay. Literature more your thing? Cool, we can talk about books and/or writing.* Movies are what sparks joy, though. Not only is my job talking to you lovely people about cinema, I love movies in a general sense. I can talk about them all day long, write about them until the cows come home, and, as a result, I’ve thought a lot about them. Why they work, why …
Tim Brennan
May 27, 2024
When you boil it down, there are two kinds of movies. The first are studio movies. These range from the (formerly) unstoppable juggernaut of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to dramas directed by Clint E…
When you boil it dow…
When you boil it down, there are two kinds of movies. The first are studio movies. These range from the (formerly) unstoppable juggernaut of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to dramas directed by Clint Eastwood. They come from a major studio* such as Disney, Universal, and others. Whether or not these films are actually good, they’re released with multimillion dollar budgets that lend them a sheen of professionalism. The second kind is independent films, and that term covers everything from studios like A24 and Blumhouse to scrappy filmmakers who make movies for less than one hundred dollars…
Tim Brennan
May 20, 2024
Things change. Sometimes it’s slow, other times it’s terrifyingly fast. Movies are no different. As a member of Generation X, the forgotten generation, my experience growing up was that seeing mov…
Things change. Somet…
Things change. Sometimes it’s slow, other times it’s terrifyingly fast. Movies are no different. As a member of Generation X, the forgotten generation, my experience growing up was that seeing movies theatrically was a central part of the cultural conversation. At school, we’d chatter excitedly about Ghostbusters. The standard-issue date involved dinner and a movie. Hell, my first date with my wife involved meeting at a movie theater to see Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead.* But things change. Fewer people are interested in seeing movies theatrically. In fact, fewer people ar…
Tim Brennan
May 13, 2024
It feels like I’ve spent an upsettingly large portion of my life trying to convince people to take movies seriously. Hearing movies referred to as “content” will never not be annoying. Just as i…
It feels like I’ve…
It feels like I’ve spent an upsettingly large portion of my life trying to convince people to take movies seriously. Hearing movies referred to as “content” will never not be annoying. Just as irritating is when I’m talking film with a normie and they use some variation of the phrase, “Why do you care about it so much? It’s just a movie. It doesn’t really matter.” Gentle reader, I submit to you that it does, and that’s why we’ll take a moment to talk about the cannon roll. You’ve undoubtedly seen moments in movies where a car flips over multiple times. That’s a stu…
Tim Brennan
May 6, 2024
If you’re a reader of a certain age, you likely remember the television series Moonlighting.* The show concerned a private detective agency, as so, so many shows did back in the good old 1980s. For …
If you’re a reader…
If you’re a reader of a certain age, you likely remember the television series Moonlighting.* The show concerned a private detective agency, as so, so many shows did back in the good old 1980s. For the most part, the episodes were a mystery-of-the-week type of thing, and if it were only that kind of a show, it would be appropriately forgotten. But Moonlighting was different. Moonlighting kicked its way through the fourth wall, parodied all manner of genres, and had an endlessly clever sense of humor. All of that is good. People watched and kept watching because of the chemistry between …
Tim Brennan
April 29, 2024
I’m not sure I can fully explain to you how I feel about violence in movies, but I’ll try, beginning with an anecdote. Years ago, a very good film called Mad Max: Fury Road was released. Like all …
I’m not sure I can…
I’m not sure I can fully explain to you how I feel about violence in movies, but I’ll try, beginning with an anecdote. Years ago, a very good film called Mad Max: Fury Road was released. Like all right-thinking people, I loved it. Brilliantly shot and edited, intelligently written, skillfully acted, all in service of a film that’s perfect for what it is. Around that time, I reconnected with an old friend, whom I’ll call Todd. I suggested we catch Fury Road, then kick around our opinions. Off we went to the theater in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, to have our faces melted off by the m…
Tim Brennan
April 22, 2024
There’s a photo I remember seeing not too long ago. It was taken in Irpin, one of the suburbs of the Ukrainian city of Kyiv. The first thing I noticed was a Ukrainian soldier staring downwards, a lo…
There’s a photo I …
There’s a photo I remember seeing not too long ago. It was taken in Irpin, one of the suburbs of the Ukrainian city of Kyiv. The first thing I noticed was a Ukrainian soldier staring downwards, a look of numb shock on his face. What he’s looking at is a dead family. A mother and her children. They had been hit in a mortar attack, and as far as anyone could tell, the mortar was fired by Russian forces who were intentionally targeting civilians. The photographer was Lynsey Addario. Consider that she was in an active war zone. She likely wore a helmet and a kevlar vest. That offered her …
Tim Brennan
April 15, 2024
For decades in movies, we had people punching, kicking, shooting, stabbing, exploding, and otherwise dismembering legions of bad guys. The 1970s gave us Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, and Charles Bron…
For decades in movie…
For decades in movies, we had people punching, kicking, shooting, stabbing, exploding, and otherwise dismembering legions of bad guys. The 1970s gave us Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, and Charles Bronson. The 1980s gave us Arnold Schzwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis. The 1990s gave us Wesley Snipes, Will Smith, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. The 2000s gave us Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, and Jason Statham. Action movies were very much a thing! I say “were,” because in the tail end of the 2000s, it seems that in large part superhero movies replaced action movies. That’s not…
Tim Brennan
April 8, 2024
I carry regret like a stone around my neck. Time and experience have taught me how to manage it, and for the most part, that stone is nothing more than a pebble. Once in a while it becomes a boulder, …
I carry regret like …
I carry regret like a stone around my neck. Time and experience have taught me how to manage it, and for the most part, that stone is nothing more than a pebble. Once in a while it becomes a boulder, one that stops all forward momentum and drags me down. But that’s the nature of regret, isn’t it? A fixation on the past that prevents us from engaging with the future. A good chunk of my regret is the obvious stuff. Do I obsess over acting like an absolute jackass during my sophomore year of college, or that moment of awkwardness at my high school reunion? Hell, yes, and I replay those m…
Tim Brennan
April 1, 2024
What’s a Ghostbusters movie supposed to look like? Some people are purists, and the only scenario they can imagine is the further adventures of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Huds…
What’s a Ghostbust…
What’s a Ghostbusters movie supposed to look like? Some people are purists, and the only scenario they can imagine is the further adventures of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson. Spend a little time online checking on Ghostbusters fandom, which I don’t recommend, and you’ll hear variations of “I just want to see the originals back doing what they do best - busting ghosts!” There’s a problem with that, considering that Ramis is no longer confined to this plane of existence, while Murray, Aykroyd, and Hudson are too old to credibly be running around with proton…
Tim Brennan
March 25, 2024
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