Our modern era of moviemaking is unsettling in that it is no longer defined by acting talent (as it was during the Golden Age of Hollywood) or directorial and auteurial interests. Instead it is increasingly driven by mega-corporations who seek to build consumer brand-loyalty by creating and curating intellectual properties that can go on in …
As is now my tradition (after failing to get under the wire last year) the first post of 2021 will be something that was meant to be posted in the last calendar year. Several things caused me to fall behind. Obviously the pandemic and its anxiety-producing effects on this author contributed. The fact that I …
Continue reading 40(ish)Years Later: The Best Movies of 1980
While Black Friday may have been the true birthplace of the modern slasher, it is undoubtedly defined, for better or worse, by the contributions of Messrs Krueger, Myers and Voorhees. In the 1980s alone seventeen of these movies graced the cineplexes, dominating the teenage market-share in a way that the MCU could only dream of. Long before comic-book movie …
Perhaps it is because this was the first year I consciously remember going to the movies, and perhaps it is because I miss going to the movies so much this year but I felt incredibly wistful and nostalgic about the year 1990 in movies. Right now I am back in grad school, which as the …
Right now it is hard to remember but there was a certain glorious optimism that surrounded the year 2000. We were living in that pocket between surviving the overhyped threat of Y2K and the tragic events of 9/11 a year later that would irreparably shatter our collective global. Coming off the relatively prosperous 90s, I …
A few weeks ago I watched two hours of ultimate frisbee out of sheer desperation to get something close to a sports fix. Among the many things that COVID-19 has robbed from us this year, competitive sports occupies that dubious spot of being simultaneously the most trivial and yet one of the most noticeable losses. …
2010 represents an incredibly important milestone in my film-watching journey. I was in the thick of graduate school in Pasadena where I found myself in walking distance from the newly opened ArcLight Pasadena and the arthouse Laemmle Playhouse 7, meaning that many a weekend that year was spent diving into double-features (since a movie ticket was still …
Regular readers will know the drill: Due to the fact that I am merely an amateur film critic who (a) has to watch movies out of my own pocket and (b) doesn't get screeners it means I am nowhere ready to make a Best of 2019 list at the end of the year like everyone …
As I write this post, I am currently living in the Seattle area which has turned into something like ground zero for the coronavirus pandemic and my family and I are firmly in "social distancing" mode. Every day bring some an exhausting mix of news to give us hope and news to send us into …
Continue reading Ten Long Movie Series to Get Us Through “Social Distancing”
Yes, I am perfectly aware that this is being published in January of 2020. A combination of unexpectedly moving back to the Seattle area last June from Canada, starting a day job in August, and having family come visit us in December simply had the effect of knocking the publishing of my amateur film blog off …
Homebody Movies 