Yeah, this film is, bar none, the single best representation of depression I’ve ever seen on film, not the least because it found a way to dramatize depression, which by its nature is almost impossible to dramatize. Plus, it gave a language to help people describe what’s happening in their own heads. Even if it…

To me, it was even more important to see that inside Riley’s parents heads, it was anger and sadness, respectively, that were at the controls. It really drove home the message that neither anger, nor sadness, are bad things, because we were seeing two otherwise well-adjusted, empathetic people who love each other, and…

Not even that. The best wrestler we’ve ever elected President, hands down, would be Abraham Lincoln. Literally, this was how people in Illinois entertained themselves in the 19th century, yet by the time he was in his 30's, nobody would wrestle the guy, because he was known to be both incredibly experienced and inhuman…

Given that Horta are silicon-based, it is a mistake to say that they are “like” rocks only insofar as they are rocks. It’s been a long while since high school geology, but I’m pretty sure sand is a silicate, and certain types of sedimentary rock, particularly sandstone, are just layers of sand that have been…

Have not seen it either, but I’m getting a “If David Lynch directed a Pixar film” vibe from these remarks...

I think the biggest flaw with this film, at least from the perspective of disability advocacy, is not the film itself, but its cultural legacy. While it has its issues, Raymond is recognizably on the spectrum. But it has a cultural legacy of “Want 3rd act superheroics from your dead weight character? Just add autism!”…

The sole thing that should ensure a Trump landslide loss in November is how he acted in February this year. This will be taught in the history books for generations to come.

Against this social backdrop, the absurdity of the 45-year-old mother of all summer blockbusters, Jaws, has never been clearer. It is the story of a cop, with no background in marine biology and, in fact, hatred of water, taking it upon himself to hunt a great white shark, a vulnerable apex predator whose survival is…

Er, if my understanding of the gossip surrounding the show is correct (and it may not be), it’s easy to understand if you recognize the difference between what it purports to be, and what it actually is. What the show purports to be is a reality television show which helps to create conventionally attractive breeding…

She was a person with enough modeling talent, natural looks and savvy to make it from Eastern Europe to America on a modeling contract. I’m not privy to the details about the modeling pipeline, but I’m not going to knock it. There’s no such thing as unskilled labor; there’s just labor we don’t value enough to dignify…

As someone who has basically (don’t ask how; it’s not pleasant) been all-but-confirmed to be on the spectrum myself, I’d say part of the problem with asking “what is autism?” is that the literal answer in the diagnostic manual amounts to “well, anything that causes significant difficulties in stereotypically…

C.O.T.D.

Also, Hermione is sidelined from the final battle because of temporary inability to successfully perform her gender. Harry is nearly killed as a consequence.

“Can anyone produce me a video of a police officer telling someone to do something, they comply and then the officer just shoots them.”

Oh, yeah . . .

And who didn’t need the help of other Italian cartographers to qualify as “American” in even the most technical sense of the word, the knaves!

Offhand, Helen Parr is the only one that comes to mind, though I think you could also say that Moana’s relationship with her grandmother fits as well (her mother’s alive, but kind of a tertiary character).

On that, fully agreed. Those videos did a great job of demonstrating to me something I didn’t see on first viewing, which is that Ashley is just as big a doofus as the rest of the southern aristocracy. He’s just seemingly profound because he cites his father a lot. He’s the 19th-century equivalent of that guy who…

Absolutely. One of the ways that politicians have let themselves off the hook about problems that have been building for 40-some odd years now is to toss the problem at the feet of the courts, and say “Oh, nothing we can do! So sorry!” Which might be true in cases where the courts are interpreting the Constitution.…