There’s a private joke I have when I get into my car. On the screen, the words “Depress brake pedal and push power button to start” always come up. Those words are a challenge, one I’ll always accept. If I’m in a lighthearted kind of mood, I’ll say, “Brake pedal, Transformers: Age of Extinction was […]

There’s an old rule in screenwriting that posits the idea that your main character should be likable. Like many rules in the art world, it’s completely wrong. Cowardly studio executives and shallow screenwriting gurus drill down on this concept because it’s easy. They assume that if viewers are stuck with a protagonist that isn’t morally […]

What happens when the title of a movie promises one thing but delivers something entirely different? That goes to the larger issue with moviegoing, I suppose. You see a trailer, spy a poster, even just hear a title, and an imaginary movie with a very particular look and feel starts playing in your head. If the […]

You want to know why I love film? It’s simple, really. As a straight, white guy living in the United States, there are a lot of aspects to life I can only understand from a distance. Lucky for me, to paraphrase Roger Ebert, film acts as an empathy machine. I’m allowed the opportunity to drop […]