The danger of cinematic essentialism is that it's inherently always an act of navel gazing.
A film director would not be a film director if they did not like movies to some extent, after all, and a film viewer (presumably) wouldn't be watching if they didn't either. When you can only define yourself by your love of the moving picture, it's worse than losing yourself within it - by subsuming your identity solely to the media you consume and media…
On my first day in Portland, I saw The Green Ray.
It’s a strange way to start a vacation, but my travels were strange from the outset. I was to be sent away for 9 days in the Pacific Northwest for 3 days at a conference. It was to be my first time traveling alone, my first time in that part of the world, my first time playing the part of a professional – and I…
Terence Davies makes poetry out of memory.
The bitter lie of domestic bliss is dismantled with the reverence that only someone who will forever be bound to the blissfulness of nostalgia can muster - songs to drown out the pain, booze to drown out the regret, life going on after lives pass beyond our grasp. That this scope is applied to the totality of a family unit (and the bonds that lie beyond their bloodline) is admirable - but that…
Ron Howard's focus on the mechanics of the rescue operation prove to be the movie's defining grace - the weight of the film is presented before it even starts, because the movie is nothing less than the demonstration of just how far we are willing to go to save but thirteen lives. That the film focuses not just on the diving operation, but the broader crisis response as it affects all stakeholders drives home the enormity of an event that…
There was a time in my life where I longed to die.
Wake up, go to class, go to work, go to bed. Wash, rinse, repeat. The tedium, the monotony, a mask to help me confront the crushing loneliness I felt at the time. Wake up, go to class, go to work, go to bed. Wash, rinse, repeat. I wanted to heal the hole in my heart, but no matter how often I reached out, I only seemed to be…
