She’s apparently going to be appearing both in the present day and in her own original time, suggesting that she is an immortal like Hob (or just very long-lived).

Saying something completely trivial that everybody already knows can confuse people, because they think that surely you must have some other point you’re trying to make, or you wouldn’t bother to say it. (This is called conversational implicature.)

Yeah, I think they are responsible in the sense that Jimmy and especially Kim know they are mixed up with dangerous people, and by dragging Howard further into their shit they put him at risk in a general way, regardless that they couldn’t foresee the specific chain of events that led to his death.

I wouldn’t say Crash is fully within the confines of the real world. It doesn’t feature anything that is outright impossible, but there is a feeling (even more marked in the novel) of dream logic, that its world doesn’t quite play by our rules. It’s magical realism more in the vein of The Trial than “The…

The context that he’s starring in the new Cronenberg movie screening at the Cannes festival feels pretty key to explaining why he’s even talking about this.

It’s understandable that The Worst Person in the World is the go-to reference here, but this movie has a lot more in common with the last film Vogt and Trier collaborated on, Thelma, which is basically a Norwegian Carrie. I suppose that makes this the Norwegian pre-school version of Chronicle.

Or, you know, to offer a very relevant perspective on the question being debated.

Yeah, it’s been like this for years. Links break hilariously. Good luck getting anyone in charge to pay attention.

If you’re such a big fan of Mads Mikkelsen, maybe learn to spell his name right.

“Mugwump” wasn’t made up for Naked Lunch. It’s borrowed from Algonquian mugquomp, “important person,” originally a chief or war leader. It was then used as a nickname for members of a faction of the Republican party in the 19th century. The similar-sounding “muckamuck” or “muckety muck” is also borrowed from Native…

The show doesn’t really follow the story of the comics, and they already used the main elements of the original ending in the S1 finale + some other bits here and there. They’ll have to come up with their own way to wrap it up in S3.

‘plagiarism’ (rather than copyright infringement itself) isn’t generally illegal

Yeah, I’m sure he’s right that audiences judge male and female characters differently for the same behavior, and it’s probably harder to get away with a female main character that’s not in some way likeable, but there are plenty of examples proving that viewers can be made to swallow the specific points he mentions. (S…

I think Dune is a pretty unusual book series in that there is not even remotely a consensus about the individual merits of the (Frank Herbert) sequels. (The books by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert are widely disparaged, though of course they also have their fans.)

Here’s the thing about prequels, people know how the story ends.

It’s a case where attempted euphemism just makes matters worse. If they’d simply said “We’re looking for a white actor for the part,” then one could question whether that’s a reasonable casting requirement or not for that particular role, but the reason would at least make sense.

I remember 538 discussing the pandemic in its first year, and Nate Silver (who has otherwise been wrong about a lot of things when it comes to COVID) saying that a bad but likely outcome was that we would reach a point where we’d just get used to a couple of thousand deaths per day.

I have loved this column, and you’ve given me a long list of movies to catch up on. Thanks, Caroline, and good luck!

Maybe when Lynch says “fast” law, he means relative to the speed of nature overall.

Thanks for all your years of film criticism here, Alex!