Between being a culture war battle and a punchline, a lot of people forget Brokeback Mountain is a great film.

To me, this is Patient Zero for the case that a good film score can absolutely make people think a movie is better than it actually is.

this feature is so good - this and Age of Heroes is some of the best movie criticism around right now. And well done AVClub too - this is exactly the features we want on this site.

Thompson also won a Golden Globe for her writing, which in this case is actually notable due to her fantastic acceptance speech where she imagined what Jane Austen would write in her diary about the film.

I grew up in a conservative Islamic community that was, for some reason, completely against rock, but rap was acceptable. All this kids I knew listened to 2-Pac and Outkast, et al. And because I didn’t know any better, I went with the herd.

I have a shoulder cat and he also has a beautiful little face.

I want to spend far more time than I have available choosing exactly the correct four movies that define me, but instead I will go with my first hunch and all but one of them are from my youth.

Yeah, I seriously can’t blame you on the 1st point. (I hope you like paragraphs, or don’t mind them, because you got me spewing. See below.)

We complain a lot, so credit where it’s due - this article is really well written. Up with this sort of this etc.

I will never understand the praise for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It’s garbage with a great lead performance. Everyone else in it is absolutely terrible, including Anthony Hopkins, who we know is better than this.

It’s essays like this one that originally drew me to the A.V. Club and keep me coming back. Good shit

Yup. Came to her fairly late too and that was a mistake, she’s a voice to have in your life for as long as possible.

I just reread the first three Earthsea books and it’s so impressive how tight but clear her writing is - the books barely crack 200 pages a piece but tell full, vivid, deep stories

I do not think I realized until now how much I counted on that wonderful, brilliant, luminous woman continuing to exist—and more than that, to continue to speak for justice—until she was gone, just like that. I don’t know what to say or what to feel. Her writing has spoken to me almost since I could read and I…

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We…

I’m a better person because Ursula Le Guin wrote stories. Everything she put to paper was beautiful, and true, and perfect.

This one really hurts. I was hoping she might get the Nobel in Literature in the next couple of years.

She is one of my very favorites. Her Earthsea series is one of the ones I reread as often as I can. And her short stories are masterful. RIP to an incredible writer.