By and large, American cinema is very safe. Occasionally you can come across a strange piece of outsider cinema or an indie flick which really pushes the boundaries of what works in an American movie, but for the most part we’re a very tame country. And […]
Advertising plays a very important, and often overlooked role in movies. The way that a movie is sold to us can have some real repercussions on how you end up feeling about it after you’ve seen it, especially when it wrestles with your expectations. There’s been a […]
Two years ago I went to the theaters to see a movie that I really had no interest in seeing, but kept hearing incredibly solid word of mouth. It was the Shallows, and it was a claustrophobic suspense flick about Blake Lively getting injured in a secluded beach where […]
I’ve said it before, and I’m apparently saying it again, but we’re having an absolutely stunning summer filled with fascinatingly searing satiric films. The impetus for these films can sometimes be a little nebulous, since the actual process of making films is much more involved and time-consuming […]
A couple of weeks ago I discussed a wonderful new film called Sorry to Bother You. In that article I discussed how impressively terrible the world is at the moment, and how art is starting to reflect the frustrations and anger involved in all of those issues. I […]
Even someone like me, who seems to subsist solely on pop culture, can have strange blind-spots in my knowledge of movies. And, one of the biggest of those blind-spots, up until very recently was the Mission: Impossible movies. I’m a huge James Bond fan, as you can see […]
As the old saying goes, we currently live in interesting times. Every single day a fresh hell is unleashed upon us, while we get to sit back and watch the world crumble around us. There are some obvious causes for that, and some more subtle ones, but […]
It surprisingly doesn’t come up a whole lot on this site, but I studied psychology in college. I didn’t go on to use it, and only completed an undergrad degree, but it was still a large part of my life. And it’s fascinating. The way the […]
Well folks, it’s time to talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe again. We’ve already had a hell of year when it comes to the costumes superheroics of the Marvel Universe, seeing one of their all-time greatest movies in Black Panther and the beginning of the culmination of their entire […]
A few years ago I had the privileged to see a film that quickly became one of my favorites of all time. Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario was a film unlike any I’d ever seen before. An incredibly dark adult thriller that looked at morality, justice, and the divide between […]
PUZZLED PAGAN PRESENTS 