Letterboxd — Your life in film

Christopher Nolan certainly tested my patience when it came to Tenet, a bloated mess of a spy film with timey-wimey elements that left me with a good gimmick to write a review around but with little satisfaction and great hesitance towards what the filmbro god would cook up next, hesitance that quickly dissipated once more and more information about said next project revealed itself and how it wound up tying into the mood and anxiety of both the internal forces…

Genre Killers (4/31)

In the 1800’s, hardback-bound books were considered a luxury item in both American and European corners, preventing readers from poorer boroughs to enjoy the many illustrious stories being published and hailed as the pivotal works of storytelling defining their century, thus dividing the quality commercial pieces of literature only between the upper and middle classes without any ability to appeal towards those who couldn’t afford such a luxury. Publishers were concerned about this, feeling that authors should…

Genre Killers (3/31)

Fascism slowly went into a decline by the end of World War II and the two notorious dictators of the conflict able to exert significant control over vital sectors in Europe died two days apart, Benito Mussolini by partisan execution, Adolf Hitler by pistol suicide, yet while the genre/movement within our focus today starts just before these two men’s deaths, the real story does begin proper during their rise of power as Mussolini, contrary to Hitler, was…

Genre Killers (2/31)

If there’s any film movement that seems easy to pin down as the most distinct and most respectfully-imitated modus operandi of filmmaking that any one country/era has made, and one that seems easiest to apply and designate as a “genre” in terms of how its aesthetics unify in such a way that anyone hearing the phrase will understand what its core attributes are meant to be, it’s the German Expressionist movement that began its operations right around…

Genre Killers (1/31)

Genres tend have a lifespan, which implicates that every venture of creative expression that exists can be capable of not only inspiring other creatives to push boundaries and lay out a tablet of history to examine, but also that every venture of creative expression can experience a process of death that sees its potential burnt-out and lead to the opening of paths for other genres to take hold of the attention of diverse audiences. The normal play-by-play…

Since their conceptions, the Ultraman and Kamen Rider franchises have always held a tight stronghold on audiences all across Asia, these daring heroes and their eternal fights against monsters from outside this world have always made for captivating entertainment and the effects constructed to bring these larger-than-life heroes and their conquests to life have codified a type of movie so pervasive and so persistent that it'd be hard to suggest these types of shows/movies and their effects-driven spectacles will ever…

The concept of the summer blockbuster is one we almost take for granted these days, a season for studios to release their tentpole films that barrel so gloriously into intense spectacles for often simple concepts that it can reach a point of self-parody at worst and light ribbing at its most inspired (like the upcoming Oppenheimer/Barbie war for supremacy, of which you better goddamn believe I'm leaving my subterranean dwellings to participate in that), but when the modern-day blockbuster developed…

On April 15th 1994, joint drag-punk club SqueezeBox! opened its doors in New York City, offering gay revelers and curious straights a way to satiate the edge brought upon by a post-AIDS existence that Brooklyn techno and Manhattan electroclash failed to properly extinguish in the minds of some, letting a truly queer crowd of women, gays guys, drag queens, and trans lives mosh out to hardcore rock and roll and gritty, truly underground punk rock that allowed people to slam-dance…

The unfortunate downside to personal taste is that, much as we want our favorite movies, shows, music, games, etc. to be as individualistic as possible, there's gonna be some overlap between personal taste and the taste of people you or I can consider enemies, be that a person bluntly not understanding the core messages and themes of a work and savoring its surface-level aspects (there was some far-right dilweed I saw that praised BioShock and agreed with Andrew Ryan's Randian…

No drug has had such an ubiquitous culture surrounding it quite like cannabis culture, as although rave/club culture made drugs such as MDMA (ecstasy) or LSD an important ticket towards the supersonic mind music outlined by the booming lights and warbling basslines, marijuana has a surprisingly rich and long-standing history that crosses over into multiple subcultures (be they Rastafarians, beatniks, hippies, hip-hopheads, and even the ravers as well) and has been studied, observed, and grown enough to find the beneficial…

Before invoking massive sparks of conversations and controversies on the topics of homosexuality/bixesuality, queer cinema, and frayed layers of homophobia found through censorship and conservative criticism of Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee tackled homosexuality in quieter terms with stronger ties to his Taiwanese heritage, continuing themes he found in his first film, Pushing Hands, of traditional Confucian ideals of family relationships clashing with informal Western ideals of individualism, the classic cultural dynamic of older and younger generations finding difficulty in reconciling…

This was supposed to be a short review, I swear.

I don't much about comedian and occasional actor Jamie Kennedy, nor much about director Michael Addis (who is brought in as moore of a stooge to give Jamie a helping hand because he directed one of his stand-up specials), he was able to smuggle his way into Scream by detailing the rules of horror movies so precisely that it wound up changing the horror movie landscape after 1996, more a…