Think of them like a different culture. Teenagers are adept at communicating with each other, but they just get other confounded when asked to speak to the adult world. on its terms. So if an adult writer can connect with them and sound believable to the intended audience, I say more power to him/her. Also: most…

I watched it (and Malick's others) last year on a long flight to South-East Asia, having recently finished a degree in anthropology, and dang if I didn't think it was the most powerful filmic articulation I'd ever seen of the mythic desire to escape the West and live on a pristine beach somewhere among the natives…

"Pretentious" can be properly applied when a movie's sense of artistic self-satisfaction exceeds its yields, with the caveat, of course, that any individual viewer's results may vary - and therein, of course, lies the challenge of the term, and the heart of the question this piece poses: what the heck does it mean if…

Like it or not, these are some of the most successful 'indie' movies in mid-sized release, and part of a rising niche in film culture. That doesn't make them any good, granted, but it is at least worthy of note.

Ah, the frustrating entry into The World of Alternate Facts…

It is an exceptionally awful movie, but it at least has empathy for its characters. Compared to "God's Not Dead," which is also an exceptionally awful movie, but also holds all its non-Christian characters in contempt.

Kids, I'll handle. Religion, whatever. But I give pause to strict vegetarians. Mostly, though, if you've listed only a handful of 'favorite books', all are bestsellers, and one or more is by Dan Brown, it probably indicates we have deeper differences.

Buzzfeed annoys me on aesthetic grounds. Upworthy annoys the shit out of me because its sometimes worthwhile information disguised as clickbait, and 9 out of 10 people who share it can take the time to pass it on, but don't feel obligated to un-bury the lead.

I've divided my time the last few years between a small Midwestern town and London, England. In the small town, there are few people interested in pop culture beyond its most-advertised incarnations, and I do find that apathy collectively negligent, representative of a general intellectual stagnation, and on a…

As I've also been, unfortunately, deeply enmeshed in this conversation lately due being in the media in a small town that loves the damn movie, I'd like to offer the following nest of links of reviews made by Christians who hate the movie, and bring up a lot of good points:

True story: I was scared to death that when I entered college (in 2003, prime DMB popularity era) that liking the band would be socially mandatory. I trace this fear to the fandom of my slightly-older cousins, who were incidentally quite conservative.

It really ties the room together.

The back half of Season Three pushed those human costs to the limit, surprising me in 'can they really do that on TV?' way and drawing me on an emotional level. I didn't want those characters to die, but loved the series' willingness to put them in an impossible situation.

Over time, genres conventions mutated into social commentary, sorta.

Season 6: The President's brother is President, and he can't stop having aneurysms! Or whatever.

My personal favorite are the costumed street gangs of "The Toxic Avenger," though I regret - being now nearly 30 years removed from the 80s - that I can't quite figure out how much they're satirizing how urban crime was depicted on screen back then, or how much they're just running with the portrayals. Perhaps there…

Actually, the more I remember Green Lantern, there are a lot those undertones in there as well: Magic Ring Thing chooses to bestow its near-limitless powers on a white male with no personality traits other than being a perfect physical specimen with a Type-A-personality of impulsive brashness.

I think that could describe Snyder's film instincts in general: there are plentiful seeds of good ideas in what he does, dare I say even insight into the contemporary condition, but he seems to always get sidetracked, hypnotic-like into depicting gratuitous pummeling.

To also note, as a Midwesterner: Pa Kent's 'hide under the bridge' advice isn't what you want to do in a tornado (get to low ground; if you're on the road, lay in a ditch). But to start naming things glaringly, enraging-ly wrong with that movie is to open a floodgate.

I recall a few years back when Tom Waits was a guest on the Daily Show, he narrowly escaped a ceiling collapse in the backstage toilet. Had he been killed, I would have felt very sad every time I shat.