The Mandalorian Chapter 1: Rebuilding a People
It took until my second viewing of The Mandalorian’s “Chapter One” for me to take a good critical look at the show. My internal eleven-year-old, long since resigned to never again having an experience like Shadows of the Empire, finally…
Review| The Lighthouse (2019)
For a while now I have been contemplating how filmmaking changed with the introduction of sound in film. The dawn of the “talkies” is an innovation that I am not at all sure we have fully come to terms with…
Editorial: Martin Scorsese and the Marvel-Go-Round
Around the middle of the decade, Harper’s critic Charles E. Whittaker gave a scathing film review. Art is supposed to be expressive, he said; but the idea of “art” is far from the movie… …not merely in absence, but in…
S07 E01 – Joker and the Final Joke
On this episode of the Reel World Theology Podcast: There has been a lot of conversation (and worry) about the effect that the new Joker film could have on our culture. While this may be another case of over-reaction to…
Reel World: Rewind #042 – Zombieland
On this episode of Reel World: Rewind… Josh finally gets Fizz back on Rewind to talk about a movie he loves to talk about, the 2009 Ruben Fleischer movie Zombieland. With the recent release of the surprise sequel, Zombieland: Double Tap,…
Hell Is Behind That Door: Suspiria (1977 & 2018) and the Curse of Knowledge
How does one go about remaking Dario Argento’s blood-splattered hallucination Suspiria? One doesn’t. Were one to try they would wreck upon the shoals of its bewildering non-plot and nightmarish visual logic. The most a writer or director can do is…
Trektember: 2019 Wrap-Up (plus: Deep Space Nine Season 8?!)
Hey, guess what? We did it, for the fourth time! (Did what? If you missed the entirety of Trektember, click here) This year’s Trektember reminded me how much I really love Deep Space Nine. It isn’t a perfect television show,…
Trektember: What You Leave Behind
In my post about this episode on my own blog, I talked about how frustrated, even angry I was about the way Deep Space Nine ended when I first saw it. But I also alluded to something beautiful in it…
Trektember: Remembering Aron Eisenberg (1969-2019)
In case you haven’t heard the news, Aron Eisenberg, the actor who played Nog and who is thus the star of this episode, has died. There have been a lot of Star Trek deaths in my lifetime: Leonard Nimoy, DeForest…