Movies
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Coming of Age in the End of the World: Big Mouth Season 4
Coming of age stories are some of the most popular, enduring, and accessible fictions in pop culture. They can comprise gorgeous films like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood or Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird to gross-out fare like Superbad or Sex Drive or Blockers to more supernatural stuff like It or Stranger Things or Super Dark Times to the fact that half of all YA novels starting with Twilight could be classified as ‘coming of age’ in some way or another; and that’s only stuff that started in the last 15 years or so. I’m sure I missed other important examples. Coming of age stories are everywhere and have been so for decades…
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The Boys Will Show You the Truth: Superheroes are Terrifying.
Imagine you are a criminal. I know, I know. You’re not. You’re a good person with hopes and dreams and you pay your taxes on time. You never speed in school zones. But, just for a second, imagine it. Let’s say you and your crew (cause of course you have a crew) have decided to commit a standard starter-crime in a comic book universe. You’re going to rob a bank. The reasons why you choose to rob a bank, or even why that particular bank on that particular day in that particular part of Metropolis/Gotham/Spiderman’s New York; don’t particularly matter. They matter to you of course. Maybe you are simply…
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Bill & Ted Face the Music is the Sequel America Needs Now
Sometimes a movie just turns out better than it should. The premise is tired, or it’s a sequel to a series that everyone (probably rightly) thought was long dead, or it’s made by a director or studio that you have deservedly lost all confidence in. Yet it works. Something about it, the writing, the way all the main actors commit to their roles, the fact that updated effects actually managed to make a difference. It just works. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a great example of this; a pointless cash-grab decades-late sequel that’s somehow hilarious and just plain enjoyable to watch. The first Pirates of the Caribbean; a movie…
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Solar Opposites: Living in the Shadow of Rick and Morty
Orson Welles wrote, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane when he was 25. Despite the fact that its’ box office performance was only considered mediocre at the time (it was eventually re-released and made plenty of money, don’t worry), it was…you know, Citizen Kane. Even now, just the title is considered shorthand for ‘great fucking movie’. The myth is that Orson Welles spent the rest of his career trying to live up to the impossible-to-meet expectations set by Citizen Kane, his debut feature film. Though it is somewhat disproven by the string of successful movies he acted in, or directed throughout his career or just the famous opening sequence in…
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Why Does Star Wars Matter So Much?
I’m exhausted today, as I write this post. Last Monday, on Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you), my roommates and I re-watched Empire Strikes Back to celebrate. Watching that fantastic movie for the fiftieth time (at least for myself), naturally got us talking about all manner of things related to Star Wars. And then, as seems to be the case recently whenever nerds the world over begin speaking about the storied franchise, we started talking about everything we thought had gone wrong with the sequel trilogy. That conversation just wrapped up half an hour ago. That’s why I didn’t post anything last Wednesday. Nine straight days to…
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Mortal Kombat, Castlevania, and The Last of Us. Solving Video Game Adaptations.
A couple days ago I watched Mortal Kombat (1995) for the first time with my roommates. We’ve been watching a ton of movies during quarantine recently, as I’m sure many of you are as well. It’s been fun. Honestly, one of the small pieces of silver lining from this whole pandemic, for me, is how pleasantly surprised I’ve been by almost everything I’ve watched lately. Even re-watching The Hobbit trilogy for the first time since theaters was more enjoyable than I expected. Mortal Kombat still sucks though. The story has so many plot-holes it might as well be a piece of Swiss Cheese handled by an overeager four-year-old with a…
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How the Artemis Fowl Movie Really Came to Be
One of the first book series I can remember choosing for myself and absolutely falling in love with is Artemis Fowl. I was nine years old when I read the first book in the series and it blew my little fucking mind. I had never read a book with a character like Artemis, essentially an evil genius and yet he was the main character. Kids books didn’t do that before. It was “Die Hard with fairies” but the main character was a young Hans Gruber with a more marketable accent. What’s not to love? Then, a couple weeks ago, I saw the abomination of a trailer for the movie adaptation,…
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Avenue 5; or Something to Watch at the End of the World
I’ve been thinking a lot about panic lately. I doubt this will surprise people and I know for sure I am far from the only one. With everything that is going on right now, it feels like almost everyone is operating at this baseline of a low-level buzz of panic. Not enough to cause riots in the street or anything, just enough so everyone’s on edge, just enough that panic-buying toilet paper and hoarding food has become common. It does say something to me that so many American consumer’s response to a health crisis is to shop harder, but I can’t blame anyone for that. I shopped harder myself. I’ve…
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Onward and the Pixar Formula
Is it real heartbreak if you can see it coming from miles away? This was a question I couldn’t quite get out of my mind throughout the near 2 hour running time of Onward, Pixar’s newest film. Real heartbreak, at least in my experience, seems to require an element of surprise, some emotional tragedy that springs up at you from nowhere. Whether fiction or reality, foreknowledge always seems to ease the pain. And in Onward, from nearly the first frame (or at least from the moment the whole shape of the plot comes clear) you can almost hear the clock ticking down to the anguish the movie intends to inflict…
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Mafia and Truth; The Irishman and Lies
I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa by: Charles Brandt is an enthralling work of True Crime writing. I read it during this past busy week for myself and sincerely regretted being forced to put the book down every time other work or obligations–this whole trying-to-start-a-writing-career-from-fucking-nothing thing does take work and time–would draw me away. Charles Brandt’s prose is better than adequate, it’s actually quite smooth and readable and is less afraid of real emotion than you are led to expect from the beginning of the book. Frank Sheeran is an endlessly fascinating character who–while clearly a criminal piece of shit…
