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Captain America’s political ideas are baloney
The Avengers broke up because Captain America has the political sophistication of a 13-year-old boy in a Che Guevara t-shirt.
Signs is a much better movie than people remember.
M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 film is not only a great, underappreciated thriller, but it helped inspire the modern horror renaissance.
Finding Fantastic Beasts
Engineered to set up a decade of movies with built-in brand loyalty, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was an enormous hit that left little mark. Is it worth a second look?
Missing, and Moving Past, Roger Ebert
I love Roger Ebert and think about his reviews all the time, but he is very much a figure out of time.
Nostalgia has always informed the new, but never quite like this
We may be hitting the nostalgia apex with Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, and it feels like something’s about to break.
Oscars 2018: The Aftermath
I revive a long-dormant tradition and tell you what SHOULD have happened at the Academy Awards.
The YA dystopia craze is now trapped in an actual YA dystopia.
The era of teenage dystopian sci-fi ended a few years ago, before anyone noticed.
The Rockin’ Rock Reckoning
Emo music is having a renaissance, and it’s making former emo dudes like me realize emo dudes weren’t always the good guys.
Back To the Future Part II isn’t trying to predict the future
We don’t connect our own futures with the gloomy future we predict for the world.
Don’t ever give me a time machine.
If time travel gets invented in the future, we’ll see evidence of it in the present.
I miss when kids entertainment was evil only because it wanted to sell kids stuff
Words are not adequate for describing the pure, unmitigated strangeness of kids’ YouTube.
The first X-Files movie is basically a below-average episode of the TV show
The filmmakers chose an odd story to try to draw non-fans of the show into the theaters.
A People’s History of the Jedi
A galactic Howard Zinn, Luke Skywalker finally exposes the truth about the Jedi Order: They’re responsible for much of what has gone wrong.
The Last Jedi is, maybe (definitely?), the best Star Wars movie
We recorded a bonus episode of the podcast devoted entirely to Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The first movie we ever discussed on the podcast was the original Star Wars, so the occasion of a new Star Wars movie seemed like it warranted a podcast update.
Maybe you need to grow up with the Star Wars movies to love them
The best and most grown-up of the original Star Wars movies still doesn’t play well to an adult viewing it for the first time.
The Clown Question
Are clowns scary, or are scary clowns scary?
It feels like HAL 9000 belongs in a different movie
The portions of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey centered around the HAL-9000 computer and its interference in the titular odyssey are probably the most widely-celebrated parts of the film. But I’ve always been a bit puzzled as to how Hal fits.
I have no idea if this year’s poor box office performance means anything.
The headline on Box Office Mojo reads, “Summer 2017 Closes Out with the Worst Labor Day Weekend in 17 Years.” As an obsessive box office watcher, I’ve noticed and been perturbed (excuse my strong language) by headlines like this in recent weeks. I love and care about movies, and I desperately want them to retain their cultural relevance. This is a silly thing for me to care about, and I’m not even doing a good job of it.