The flute scene is intentionally erotic, specifically auto-erotic, intentionally weird, and intentionally funny. Like all of the best aspects of this movie, it is an acidicly self critical autobiographical joke. If you look at the film as Ridley Scott critiquing his own artistic impulses, both pretentious and…

The only truly great lightsaber fight is Luke and Vader in Empire, which looks angry, sad and real. Everything after that looks overcoreographed and dancey. Last Jedi’s are pretty good, but the blocking and camerawork remain stagey compared to the vicious passion of Empire. Good swordwork is always nice, but always go…

Great. Sad Puppies: the Star Wars edition.

Time to call up Ye Olde Craig Ferguson. He was the perfect blend of goofy, thoughtful, and political.

I hope this trend continues for everything. I always enjoy a post-credits bowl of Lucky Charms after the initial bowl. Especially when it’s basically just down to a bag of crushed freeze-dried marshmallow powder and Nick Fury.

If the theme of the story is about facing death, like The Bridge to Teribithia, then it’s a good idea to have a meaningful character die; keeping characters alive just because the audience likes them is counter to good storytelling.

Agreed. Serialized, open-ended stories turn all characters to mush, and destroy the idea of meaningful statements that are memorable. Characters are only ever expressions of theme — they are what you use to say what you mean with a story. If the characters ramble on endlessly, then your meaning becomes foggy. You…

I’ve defended Avatar, and am totally open to the idea of sequels. But this looks like a flyer for a back-to-school sale.

Though there’s plenty of equal-opportunity political satire going on, the right-wing flavor people complain about is from the film’s root ideology, where the world is made up of smart, special people and dependant rubes (for instance, the main character vs. everyone in the section-8 style housing he is raised in, or…

Take Me Home, Country Roads was also featured prominently in Alien Covenant. Did John Denver have a fire sale or something?

I’m just as guilty of this as anyone, but I miss the days when us nerds were positive and excited about things they might like; now we have everything we want and feel entitled to every whim and demand. We’ve turned into pushy customers at a restaurant. I’m not saying we should take what they give us, good or bad. …

We should also take a look at Silence of the Lambs. For a so-called masterpiece, the psychotic maniac in it is terribly vilolent. Why can’t he simply ransom people?

It’s reasonable to look at all this text and type TL/DR. But I really hope you do read it, as it’s not snarky (not meant to be, anyway), and it might be worth thinking about.

The film uses the casting of Johansson to make an anti-whitewash statement; it’s literally the entire plot and theme of the film. That we are stuck in being angry even when the movie totally supports what we believe — going so far as to use Hollywood against itself — this makes me throw up my hands.

I was really knocked out by this movie, both because it was gorgeous and exciting, and also because the very point of the film is about the whitewashing people pre-accused it of. Identity, and how it is manipulated, is the core statement of the film, and the casting of Johannson (and the audience’s relationship to her…

I’m really looking forward to this movie; I’m a huge fan of both the original film and comic, and, from what I’ve seen, they’ve done a nice job of representing and expanding the visuals and atmosphere. Hopefully the script is good — if so, I bet it’s a great picture. RE: casting — I wish people would think harder on…

From Jonathan Letham’s book of essays, ‘The Ecstasy of Influence:’

“GODFATHER IV

Good video. I both agree in specific, but disagree generally, with these points. Marvel films are flat and ugly, and grading them with an eye toward higher contrast does solve some of that issue. But flat grading is not as automatically bad as he makes it out to be; many of David Fincher’s films use a flat but…

The budget for this film is probably north of 130 million dollars, so I think it’s reasonable to think that the producers aren’t racist, they are simply risk averse. From their point of view, they need someone famous to play this role if they want to make your money back in the American market.

Likewise, today’s…

Except that he is literally saying the exact opposite of what you say he is saying, this is a really great article. Without your clearminded writing here, one might read Eastwood's remarks — where he calls Trump a racist and stupid — as an indicator that he thinks racism is idiotic. But by reading your headline, I got…