How Before Midnight Captures the Harshness of Love in the Most Resounding of Manners (Film Analysis)

Director Richard Linklater's Before series is both a fictional and realistic look at growth between its characters and actual writers over the course of time.  

Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back - Evolution (GUEST Film Review)

Written by my special guest and close friend Joel Coppadge!

A Most Violent Year or: The Quintessential Anti-Scorsese Gangster Film (Film Analysis)

A Most Violent Year is the quintessential anti-Scorsese gangster film.

Take This Waltz Part 2: A Beautiful Cautionary Tale on Love and Desire (Film Analysis)

LINK TO PART 1!!!

Take This Waltz Part 1: A Beautiful Cautionary Tale on Love and Desire (Film Analysis)

The late, great Roger Ebert once wrote a piece on how the film La Dolce Vita helped him “measure the inexorable progress of time.”  Each decade from 1962 to 2002 he saw the film and each decade his view on it altered based on his own experiences and gained knowledge in life.  I first saw Take This Waltz in 2011, and watched it again in 2020.  While it hasn’t been a decade yet, my life has vastly changed during those nine years.  I’ve graduated, own a house, a dog, and a cat, had several jobs, and most notably been married for over five years.  My marriage is the key to this review.  My understanding and perspective of Take This Waltz has altered vastly between viewings—as has my immense appreciation.  Where I once viewed Take This Waltz as an interesting love triangle romance-drama has blossomed into a beautiful cautionary tale on love and desire—full of clever, deceptive storytelling, fleshed-out characters, lovely cinematography, and a knack for going against Hollywood conventions.

The Artist's Disappointing Missed Opportunity (Film Review)

The Artist is a love letter to silent films in addition to the Golden Age of Hollywood.  It is filmed entirely in black and white, primarily silent—using classic techniques such as title cards to tell its story—and pays homage to many films of the classic era (from early silent films all the way to the 1940s with films like Citizen Kane).  I love watching silent films—even the poorest quality ones have something to offer in terms of telling the birth and evolution of cinema.  But when I come across a great one, a silent film with passion made by people showing zeal and ambition to this newborn craft, it is an absolute treat.  Heck, my very own blog is named after one of the greatest, most innovative silent films ever created (as well as one of my favorite films): Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr.

The Spectacular Now Part 3: A Mature Coming-of-Age Romance with Two Spectacular Performances (Film Analysis)

LINK TO PART 2!!!

The Spectacular Now Part 2: A Mature Coming-of-Age Romance with Two Spectacular Performances (Film Analysis)

LINK TO PART 1!!!

The Spectacular Now Part 1: A Mature Coming-of-Age Romance with Two Spectacular Performances (Film Analysis)

There are occasions where the wrong elements of a story get engrained into my brain.

Note: This is my second review of The Spectacular Now.  Here's my original review from 2013, written back when the film first released.

Spring Part 2: A Wonderful, One-of-a-Kind Amalgamation of Romance, Horror, Comedy, and Self-Discovery (Film Analysis)

LINK TO PART 1!!!

Spring Part 1: A Wonderful, One-of-a-Kind Amalgamation of Romance, Horror, Comedy, and Self-Discovery (Film Analysis)

An immortal being, thousands of years old, containing the DNA of all its past evolutionary organisms.  A monstrosity of stingers, beaks, tentacles, and claws unexplainable by science.  The creature lurks among us in secret, draining the blood of its victims—whether beast or human—like a vampire.  Spring is about this grotesque abomination…

...finding true love.

Note: This is my second review of Spring.  Here's my original review from 2016, written when I first saw the film.

Frozen II (Quick Review)

Frozen II is one of those strange examples where a lot of stuff occurs yet it feels like very little happens.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Film Review)

To quote Emperor Palpatine: Augghhhh!!!

Ford vs Ferrari (Film Review)

Ford vs Ferrari is a good film that's structure has been seen many times before.  It adheres closely to the Hollywood biographical drama formula just with a new setting of the titled auto manufacturing companies competing to win a car race.

How to Train Your Dragon Part 2: How Visual and Sound Turn a Good Story into Something Amazing (Film Analysis)

LINK TO PART 1!!!

Using the knowledge gained from his time with Toothless, Hiccup succeeds in passively defeating and/or befriending the training dragons in fighting class.  Despite such successes gaining his peers’s praise (aside from Astrid, who grows jealous over Hiccup becoming the new star student), Hiccup is more preoccupied with getting Toothless back in the air again—for a more accurate lesson Hiccup was taught is that a downed dragon is a dead dragon.  Being the inventor that he is, Hiccups begins designing a tail flap to replace Toothless's missing scale.  Hiccup discovers, however, that the artificial wing will not remain open when Toothless flies alone.  As such, Hiccup builds a saddle for him to ride and help assist Toothless in flying.  The film’s excellent pacing is shown off here with a split montage of Hiccup building the flying device while training at classes.  I love how naturally the scenes move from Hiccup just trying to build an artificial scale for Toothless to saddling up to fly with him.

How to Train Your Dragon Part 1: How Visual and Sound Turn a Good Story into Something Amazing (Film Analysis)

Take a story about a boy’s bond with his dog.  Turn the dog into a wild animal the boy needs to tame.  Turn the wild animal into a mystical species the boy’s family is at war with.  Make the family a tribe of Vikings, the species dragons, and the boy the mediator for the two groups to finally end their differences, and you got the core construct to How to Train Your Dragon.  

The Lion King: 2019 (GUEST Film Review)

Written by my special guest and close friend Joel Coppadge!

If you were a 90s kid, then The Lion King is what comes to mind when you think of great 90s Disney movies.  Not only is it apart of the Disney Renaissance, but it had something for everyone, both kids and adults.  Fantastic animation, great, catchy songs, and a compelling story that is still relevant to this day.

Joker (Film Review)

Despite being set in a superhero universe focused on one of the most iconic supervillains of all time, Joker departs extensively from its genre’s usual constructs.  It overtakes The Dark Knight Trilogy as the most grounded film set in the Batman universe.  There’s no magic, special abilities, herculean feats of strength, advanced technology, over-the-top schemes, or anything unrealistic that has become engrained within the superhero genre.  Joker has little need for suspension of disbelief and is so set in reality that I, at times, forgot I was even watching a Batman film—earnestly thinking Gotham City was New York City—only to be reminded when the Wayne family or Arkham were brought up.

The Blair Witch Project or: An Electrifying Achievement in Terror and Realism (Film Analysis)

In 1993, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez began development on what would eventually be a low-budget horror film told entirely through handheld cameras from a first-person perspective.  The concept came from how both men found documentaries on the paranormal scarier than traditional horror films.  The end result was a sixty-thousand-dollar indie film called The Blair Witch Project.  The tiny film would end up grossing over two-hundred and forty-eight million dollars at the box office, a ratio of one dollar for every ten-thousand, nine-hundred, and thirty-one made.  The Blair Witch Project would end up in the Guinness Book of World Records for "top budget box office ratio" for a mainstream feature film, becoming one of the most financially successful, well-recognized, and influential indie films from the 20th century.  It spawned a sequel, a remake, multiple video games, books, comic books, and even a real documentary on the film’s production.  The film revived the found-footage genre as well as popularizing the idea of telling stories using the first-person perspective.

Zombieland: Double Tap (Film Review)

This is a treat.