Great article. I think that it is pretty important to make the distinction between directors and films, just as you would distinguish between a CEO and his or her company. For me, the mark of good direction is when the way that a story is told on the screen is different and more creative than how I would visualize it…

Thanks for the great column that reminds us what all AV Club columns used to be like. I’m glad you’re keeping up the good fight with a new feature!

On a related note, I miss PG movies for grown-ups. Some of the best films I’ve ever seen were “appropriate” for everyone but had serious themes that made me feel more like an adult when I watched them as a kid and understood them. Now, to signal that a movie is serious, you need to have an R rating, and therefore you…

It’s a big bummer. I just watched The Young Pope over the last two weeks, and it was fun to go back and read (pre-Kinja) AV Club reviews of the episodes after I watched each one. It was crazy how lively the commentary was, and how the comments really gave me a lot of food for thought. Now any given TV review will have…

I feel like they’ve still had some great episodes (the Monopoly game was top true to life), but it’s a lot more hit and miss. The characters have become more like caricatures, to be sure.

There were reports of this back in August, and my understanding was that Gilbert pushed hard to trade Irving for George and Bledsoe and asked LeBron if he would stay in Cleveland if that fell into place, and LeBron didn’t say yes - so I don’t know if you can say LeBron/Rich Paul made any nudge. Probably the opposite,…

I read this piece earlier today, and while it was a good in-depth look, I didn’t think the Kyrie/Paul George/Eric Bledsoe failed trade was breaking news. I swear I heard reports that Dan Gilbert was trying to shop Kyrie for George shortly before the draft, and that LeBron essentially stopped that trade by refusing to…

This why I’m worried about Disney buying Fox’s assets and presumably setting up at least one if not several streaming services to distribute content. ESPN has by far the worst Roku channel that I’m subscribed to, and I don’t want all the media I consume to eventually be accessed on a service that poorly-designed.

As a huge fan of the Thor comics, only Ragnarok really captured their spirit, precisely because it was so goofy. The main theme of Thor (for me) has always been how thin the lines between stupidity and valor and the sublime and the ridiculous are. Ragnarok could have had a little more emotional depth, but it brought…

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Logan. The performances were good, but the next time I want to basically watch Shane, I’ll just watch Shane. I will say that while I liked Dunkirk well enough, I really liked Spider-Man: Homecoming and Ragnarok a lot and will probably rewatch the latter two the first chance I get.

Al Roker was always the REAL face of Today.

I know it’s hard to believe, but I remember a time only 10 years ago or so when a Republican president, most Democrats, and a sizable chunk of Republican congressmen were gung-ho about freer trade and a vastly simplified immigration program. About 10 years before that, we had a Democratic president who worked hard to…

Given the ramifications of Pizza Gate, I can understand why a (loosely-defined) news site like the AV Club would want to do a blurb about this conspiracy theory and debunk it, but, yeah, this is way too much coverage for something from 4chan.

Honestly, the idea of a Frederick-centered show isn’t that stupid. Most sitcoms start off with a young adult with arrested development, but in Freddie’s case, both parents will have already diagnosed his arrested development and will be arguing about how to treat it.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sure In A Lonely Place after hearing this news.

I read a review of Lady Bird in the New Yorker that made the case for the direction being possibly the weakest part of the film (while still being very good) and since reading that, I can see what the critic meant. They focused on how, for a movie where the setting of Sacramento was stated to be very important to the…

The Middle really deserved love in its last season.

I’d say it’s pretty deserving of a few nominations. It was a common story told very well by a great cast. I really liked it. Can I honestly say that I enjoyed it significantly more than Blade Runner 2049 or Thor: Ragnarok? No, but I really liked it.

The Big Sick was a delightful movie that was thoroughly entertaining for its entire runtime, while still handling serious themes with aplomb. Either The Greatest Showman is secretly 200% better than its trailers lead me to believe, or the HFPA laid an egg here. (Also, Holly Hunter deserved a nom for Supporting…

I know it’s really unpopular to point out, but there are actually valid arguments against net neutrality*. I don’t know why people assume mega-rich ISPs are totally evil, but the mega-rich websites fighting for net neutrality are 110% altruistic. (For the record, I think both are evil).