This was my fourth experience inside a cinema in the past 12 months. I saw TENET at an empty press screening last August, then again at an even emptier public screening a few weeks later. At the beginning of this month, I rented a theater so a small group of us could see GODZILLA VS. KONG together. And now my wife and I went to the theater where she works to see THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, one of the two…

"That's what I'm working on
A song to fix what's wrong
Take what's broken
Make it whole
A song so beautiful
It brings the world back into tune"
-"Come Home With Me," Hadestown

One of the best love stories I've ever seen brought to screen. It is filled with the kind of earnest moments that, in a lesser film, would induce eyerolling and doubt. Here, Céline Sciamma makes you feel why those things have become cliches because the two leads–the…

After hearing that this film topped SPIRITED AWAY and YOUR NAME. at the Japanese box office, I decided I needed to see this film. Just from tipping my toes back into the Gundam waters and realizing I needed to watch all 26 episodes of the anime series that this film continues, I've now watched more anime in the past month than I have in the preceding decade. 2021 is a strange an unexpected time.

While SPIRITED AWAY and YOUR NAME.…

This was easy to watch but hard to follow. Figuring out that this was sort of short stories rather than a single building narrative really helped. The digital color push here is completely unreal, and each scene seems to unfold according to different aesthetics and tonal choices. 

At times it was almost Twin Peaks levels of arch soap opera, and at other times, an extremely bloody martial arts movie. 

I fully intend on reading the book series this is meant…