My friend, Bloodshot and The Hunt are right there.

Seriously though, I’m old enough to remember the pre-AOL Web circa 1996...it was all people smart enough to configure TCP/IP and/or write HTML code and everyone was cool to each other.

Back in the day (which means like, the early 1990s), I borrowed a classmate’s brother’s MIDI synthesizer module (marque and model unknown at this point sadly - was probably a Roland or Korg unit - but I do remember it was expensive as hell and pretty damn advanced for its time), and accompanying full-size keyboard…

Folgers in the Attic. 

This.

My favorite part is grinding random battles to extinction. You can literally (and permanently) depopulate almost every random enemy in the game and usually get a badass item for doing so.

I think what it also represents is a very good example of what you might call the fundamentals of filmmaking, a sort of masterclass focus on what sets movies apart from the other performing arts. Yeah, the story is solid and the acting is great, but it’s really a tour-de-force of cinematography, aiming for that…

Exactly. And I do think Scorsese makes some valid artistic points about the lack of surprise or psychology in a lot of these movies that’s more about his personal taste, but the ramifications go beyond personal taste and into the realm of active destruction.

This is actually much closer to Scorsese’s argument anyway. His issue was exactly yours about demos: it’s not a problem that blockbuster loudness exists, the problem is when they take up every screen of every cinema; the problem is when Disney buys one of the biggest studios that makes a lot of popular non-superhero…

This movie in particular, or something like Jack Reacher or Motherless Brooklyn or whatever, no, is not really more sophisticated than the better superhero movies, and I’d say the best recent ones (Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) are all significantly better than this movie or plenty of…

After the early 90s anime boom with Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, and Ninja Scroll, the mid-to-late 90s brought Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Detective Conan, Perfect Blue, and a couple little shows called Pokemon and One Piece.

The issue is that mortal film directors are not able to provide satisfying and definitive answers to the meaning of life and human existence, so any film that grapples with this theme is bound to disappoint if everything is spelled out.

Thanks for the input. If I was writing professionally and had the luxury of more time I think you’d have a point. As a fan of the movie responding in a comments box on my lunch break I did what I could. Sometimes the occasion calls for a spitball.

“2001” was my first art damage experience. My parents took me to see it at the drive in the year after it had been released. By the end of the film my Dad and siblings were sound asleep but I was transfixed with bulging eyes glued to the screen. I was a bit of a sci-fi kid having grown up on the Irwin Allen shows and…

One of the stranger aspects of 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably its connection to the Marvel Universe.

Kubrick was also rushing to get 2001 out into the world before American astronauts landed on the moon.

Office Space is an absolutely fantastic movie, but I think it’s going through a bit of a(n appropriate) critical re-evaluation now that millennials are coming of age and Gen Xers are aging into the management roles the movie vilifies. Office Space exists in the same space as American Beauty and Ghost World and a ton…

There’s actually one on this commercial beach, not a state beach park thing, near where I grew up has this cruddy old arcade still open. It’s amazing. Crappy old games normal prices, but those type of places are rare.