Ashby Returns from the Afterlife.
The Holdovers.
Directed by Alexander Payne.

   Alexander Payne once stated about his work and life in the following quote: "I get asked, 'How can you have such failures in your films?' Well, what else is life about? There's some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it." When people complain about a movie having "failures," it speaks of their interest in stories with no interest in the human condition…

               The ion of Screenwriting. 
                 Written by Blake Patterson. 

                 Chapter One: Introduction

    “If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed,” stated by director Stanley Kubrick. At the beginning of cinema, screenwriters could only project ideas through movement. The lack of sound at the time was a barrier to be deal with. Once sound…

Nashville at 50: Cinema's Peak.

  Those who have known me for a few years will likely think of me as the "Altman guy" or "Ashby guy" if one of their movies is brought up in a discussion. There are many reasons for those labels, and one of them explains why I love Robert Altman. Fifty years ago today, Altman’s Nashville was released to the public. Even though he had already established himself as a master with gems like McCabe…

I have seen this film too many times to count since I was ten, but I can confidently quote a few scenes from the movie, particularly any sequence with David Patrick Kelly's Luther. The Warriors is so embedded in my memory that you could argue my childhood obsession with it was as integral to my film taste as a Star Wars nerd analyzing every theory about the franchise's universes. Few action movies, especially in modern cinema, stimulate my mind with…

Next Best Picture says Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness is “a brilliantly scathing takedown of the wealthy and beautiful.” And The Square was “a brilliantly scathing takedown of” the Left’s hypocrisies. Facetiousness aside, Östlund is, quite possibly, the worst arthouse filmmaker and satirist working today. Östlund is the anti-Buñuel because he replaces subtlety and complexity with broadness and superficiality. While the aim is satirical, Östlund’s execution is unfunny and aggressively dull in how he exaggerates his contempt for the elite’s…

Unsatisfied Surrealism.
I Saw the TV Glow.
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun.

   The image that will likely define Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow is the motif of an ice cream truck with a mix of pink and purple smoke coming from it. The motif is a metaphor for the idealism of nostalgia and the negative aftermath later, as the main character Owen (Ian Foreman as the younger version of Owen and Justice Smith as the older version of…