A lot of people ask me “What are your credentials to do what you do?” What gives me the right to critique movies and tv shows? A few people have even asked it in good faith. So what are my credentials?

If I was being cheeky I would say “a pulse and a camera.”

Did I go to film school? Did I get a degree in journalism? No. Neither of those things. I went to college, but it was to study English Literature with a double focus in Philosophy. That’s a pretty common thing that real critics do—they’re writers who like movies. Roger Ebert got a bachelor’s degree in journalism but his PhD was in English. Unlike Ebert, who shortly thereafter won a Pulitzer Prize for film criticism, I dropped out of college and spent a couple of years as a homeless addict.

Took a sabbatical, if you will. A few gap-years.

Most of your favorite directors never went to film school, or they dropped out. Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Ava Duvernay, Sergio Leone, David Fincher, Tarantino, Wes Craven. Jordan Peele and Peter Bogdanovich studied theater and acting. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t go to film school because it didn’t exist. Steven Spielberg dropped out of film school and later went back to complete his degree.

But they did study film. Everybody who is any good at making or talking about movies studies film. They love it. Do you think Christopher Nolan ever walks out of a movie and thinks, “Hmm, 7.4 out of 10.” I doubt it. They think about theme and tone, the way the camera moves, they learn about pans, tilts, dollys, zooms, dolly zooms, cranes, snorricams, tracking shots, gimbals, static vs. dynamic, handhelds and tripods.

But a movie is a story told with pictures, so the photography is important, but the story is king. So, they learn about three-act structure, how an act is made of sequences which are made of scenes which are comprised of beats.

But all of that is intellectual, it’s secondary to how a movie makes me feel. So that’s where I start. I walk out of a theater and I think, “How do I feel.” Am I bored? Am I angry? Elated? Inspired? Sad? Am I put-off or turned-on? Maybe I feel nothing. That’s a bad movie, the only unforgivable thing.

Subscribe now

I think the most important skill I have is that I’m really good at figuring out how I feel. I’m really good at being honest with myself. Once I know that, using the intellectual things I talked about earlier, the things I’ve studied about movies, I try to reverse engineer that feeling. What is it about those moving pictures that made me feel that way?

I write that down. Boom. It starts as a conversation between my emotions and the movie. But it should go deeper. You can then look at text and subtext, cultural relevance and context. Nowadays, people talk about “visuals” and “pacing” like they’re toppings on a pizza. Forget pacing. Some movies want to be slow. Slow cinema is a whole subgenre. And if not, maybe the reason it felt slow has to do with the character, or the performance, or the derivative score, or the muted color-grading.

Maybe I had a headache, or I was stressed about my medical issues or, god forbid, I was on my phone and didn’t watch the dang thing. Maybe I didn’t understand the homage or have no perspective on the cultural trauma it was referencing. Maybe I need to learn something, or maybe it’s just not for me.

That’s what I do. I recognize that movies are the highest artform, the conjunction of photography, literature, fashion, music, theater, athletics, dance, even science and carpentry, with hundreds, sometimes thousands of people working together to tell a story.

And yes, produced in an industry that is historically corrupt, labyrinthine in its cruelty, warped by its obsession with celebrity and wealth. An industry often used to manipulate, oppress, and not tell a story but change the narrative.

That’s why it’s extra important to study. Or, maybe you’re more into books or sports. That’s cool, too.

Leave a comment

You can see more of my work on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. I also host a podcast called Streaming Things, wherever you find your podcasts.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, wait, it’s…a Box Office Hit! James Gunn’s DC universe kickstarter is set to bring in close to $130 million its opening weekend after breaking records in Thursday previews gross according to The Hollywood Reporter.

This going to be a full SPOILER review of James Gunn’s Superman (2025) so make you sure you’ve either seen the movie already or are someone very unlike me who doesn’t care to be spoiled if you read on (or watch the YouTube version linked below)!

The new Superman is everything I needed it to be and, I think, everything DC needs it to be to start a new Cinematic universe. Gunn makes some interesting choices with the narrative structure and the character focus and your mileage will vary on some of those choices, but overall this is a crowd-pleasing film that most people will enjoy very much.

Tonally, I think it’s a breath of fresh air for Superman. James Gunn tries to strike a balance in between the classic comic book silliness of Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) and the modern world of cynicism, the “realism” of Batman Begins and the Batman wannabes of the Snyderverse. He mostly succeeds in doing that.

The film is really funny, like all of James Gunn’s movies, and I know this because I saw it with a crowd of about 200 people and there was lots of laughter in that crowd, even some clapping—haven’t seen that in a while. A lot of people were skeptical of the Krypto the dog addition and how that would work in live action but people love dogs. I think it was an absolute hit. At the end, when Krypto turns Luthor into his chew toy, my crowd was jubilant.

Subscribe now

One of the big sticking points for many people will be how the movie starts in medias res: Kal-El has been on Earth for a while, and he’s not alone – there’s a whole host of metahumans there with him. In typical James Gunn fashion, many of them are more obscure or at least not your go-to choices for a live-action depiction. You’ve got Mr. Terrific, Hawk Girl, and Metamorpho. He’s already been Superman for a few years, he’s already with Lois Lane and she even knows his secret identity!

I may be in the minority here but I like this choice, especially after rewatching all of the previous Superman films this past week. I don’t need to see Krypton’s destruction or Ma and Pa Kent pulling a baby from a crater and thinking, “finders keepers.” The biggest criticism the DCEU got was moving too quickly, never taking the time that the MCU took with Phase 1 to establish these characters individually before bringing them together but for some reason this “well, we’re here now” approach doesn’t bother me at all.

James Gunn has recently come out and said that his DCU will be closer to Star Wars than what the MCU did, and by that he meant it will be a series of separate stories set in a connected universe – he’ll be less concerned about getting bogged down in play-by-play continuity.

The best thing this movie offers, and I think the most important for moving forward, is the cast. David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan are a stellar Lois and Clark, but the entire supporting cast, from Jimmy Olsen to Lex Luthor, are dripping with chemistry and charisma. I do think we could have used more time with Lois and Clark – maybe we didn’t need another origin story but I would have liked to have seen these versions of these characters meet and grow to love one another. However, they do so well with the sparse romantic material that they’re given.

I was grateful we didn’t get a third iteration of Lois where she’s a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist that, for some reason, can’t spell. No shade whatsoever to Parker Posey!

Isabella Merced as Hawkgirl and Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific were crowd favorites at my screening. Deservedly so. Mr. Terrific probably has the best fight scene in the film, when he’s shielding Lois outside the entrance to the Pocket Universe while Superman is captive. He’s slinging his balls around T-Bagging everyone.

We don’t get much of the Justice Gang, outside of Mr. Terrific, just classic Nathan Fillion quips and Isabella Merced flying around screaming as Hawk Girl, but it’s enough of a promise for the future for me. I loved when Hawk Girl murdered that guy – like bitch I’m not Superman; that’s James Gunn telling the audience that this Superman has a code, but this universe will still have some edge, some bite.

There’s a lot going on in this movie, and many people will argue too much, especially for the first movie, but there’s a very simple core character arc for Clark Kent himself in this film that I thought was very effective.

I hear a lot of chatter online, mostly from Snyder bros, about how weak this version of Superman is. He’s not enough of an Alpha! I think it’s important to see our protagonist struggle, it’s interesting to see conflict that’s external as well as internal, but it also makes perfect sense. He’s fighting himself! It’s a clone, how can you watch the whole movie and still wonder why he got his ass kicked. It’s also a good metaphor that may be a bit on the nose, but he spends the film rocked by this realization that his parents, his idols, sent him there for purpose at odds with his core beliefs. Does that make him a bad person? Does that undo his goals, shatter his sense of identity?

The very last scene of this film is such a good ending. You get one final belly laugh from the brilliant Alan Tudyk (Gary) and then the tears flow from a very simple bookend and the credits roll. Gary says, just like at the beginning, that it comforts him to see is parents but instead of Bradley Cooper’s Jor-El it’s Ma and Pa Kent, his literal found family, the true source of his morals and outlook. I cried like a baby Kal-El.

I’m not sure what to make of Jimmy Olsen being pursued by every attractive woman in Metropolis but, I’ll be honest, it made me chuckle.

Share

We only get the tiniest glimpse of Milly Alcock as Supergirl and (more honesty) I don’t know much about that character. I never read the comics or watched that show but I LOVED whatever it is that she’s doing, I can’t wait to see her movie.

All in all, I think, even if you don’t vibe all the way with James Gunn’s style or like the aesthetic (I completely understand anyone who thinks the movie doesn’t always look the best) you’ll likely still be sold on these characters and seeing much more of them in the future, which is the main goal of this movie. I really, really liked it.

Thanks for reading – maybe that’s the real punk rock.

For more of my work on YouTube, try my top ten favorite movies of the year so far:

Or our recent interview with Dichen Lachman from Severance on the Streaming Things Podcast:

Leave a comment

(Spoilers ahead for 28 Years Later. Do not read this if you have not seen the film.)

If you’re tempted to say something about it being the huge wiener that I can’t stop thinking about, I need you to know that the fruit of that joke is hanging lower than an Alpha’s dong.

This isn’t a post about why you should like this movie. This is a post about why I like this movie. If you’re curious.

What’s up with that ending?

I want to address everything being said about this movie as well as I can. I should also say that this is mostly a transcript of a couple of videos I made about this film. I still can’t stop thinking about it and I wanted to share my love with folks who like to read.

Firstly, if a movie is divisive that generally means that actual choices were made. It wasn’t made with 10 studio executives and test audiences pouring over every detail to make it as broadly appealing as possible. That’s a good thing.

But this movie isn’t even that divisive outside of the social media/quick-reaction-for-clicks bubble; I just want to throw that out there. Both the Critics’ and Audience scores for this movie are relatively high. Almost every single person I respect or look up to as a taste-maker in the film space at least liked this film—most of them loved it. I was shocked to see the online vitriolic reaction after I posted my first gushing review.

“This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” You’re either lying, you’ve only watched this movie and The Shawshank Redemption, or you speak in hyperbole because it plays better online. I get it, we all do it, but let’s call it what it is.

The biggest, most popular gripe I’ve seen about this movie has to do with the “ending.” I put it in quotes because it’s not even the ending. It’s the epilogue. The movie starts with a prologue, a character named Jimmy in 2002 seeing everyone he knows and loves watching Teletubbies and then being slaughtered by a horde of infected. There are some references to this character being present in this world in the main section of this movie, you can see “JIMMY” graffitied in the background or carved into bodies. In the epilogue, we see him “grown up” and now he is the boss of a crew of Teletubby ninjas.

I can see how that wouldn’t work for everyone, but that’s a very small thing in the grand scheme of this movie. It’s a narrative device called a bookend. I think it works very well to set up a future story, but if you don’t, that’s fine.

Also, I’m not from the UK so I have no context for the whole Jimmy Saville thing I’m now learning about. I can imagine if you’re from the UK you would realize immediately, “Oh no, don’t run with this crew” but also it makes sense that young Jimmy would have watched him on TV growing up and the man’s crimes, in this universe, would have never been exposed. It’s not like this character is coping well mentally.

It’s a trope, in post-apocalyptic movies, for people who experience the end of the world as children to never fully grow up as a result of that. It has been the case in this genre all the way back to A Boy and His Dog and beyond. This was too weird for you? Have you never seen a Mad Max movie? This is 28 years later, it’s going to be different than 28 Days, it would be way more egregious if it wasn’t.

The thing that bothers me is that most of the people complaining about this would love this scene if it took place after the credits and it had Cillian Murphy in it for absolutely no reason at all.

Why I loved 28 Years Later

So, why did I love this movie? The first third of this movie is in line with your expectations for this film. Jamie and Spike traverse the apocalypse, chased by infected. It’s scary, it’s tense, it’s action-packed. You feel like you’re watching The Road with more action, it’s great. Spike is growing up and he idolizes his father as much as he loves his mother, who is ill.

Then, when he gets back, he realizes that his father is a liar. He’s making up stories about their journey which is no big deal but then he sees his Dad cheat on his mother, who is dying in bed. It’s an awful awakening for him, one that we all experience. There is a day in every person’s life when they realize to their shock that their parents are mortal. They’re just as scared and confused as we are and that is terrifying.

The island of safety and security on which Spike resides is fake and the mainland, filled with terror and uncertainty, is the real world. So, he makes an emotional decision based on his fear of losing his mother and his anger at his father and sneaks away to find this mysterious doctor that could heal his mother.

This is the part that reminded me of Heart of Darkness, or more specifically it’s step-child Apocalypse Now, because we as the audience think Dr. Kelson is this absolute maniac, that’s what we’ve been told. We’re expecting Colonel Kurtz but no, another subversion of expectations, he’s sane! He’s kooky, but he’s a good guy. He has retained his humanity, in fact he sees the humanity in the infected. He lives peacefully among them, for the most part.

That’s another crazy thing this movie does: it humanizes the infected. They live and breathe and eat and drink and give birth. The baby that’s born is not infected, because children are innocent of the sins of their parents!

And sure, the infected are awful dangerous creatures, but through no fault of their own. The society that Spike comes from, however, we slowly realize is a militarized, patriarchal cult. We see the different roles in the society – hunter, watchtower, seamstress – they train the young with bows and arrows as soon as they can walk and Boyle intercuts all of this military iconography across centuries into that sequence – BOOTS BOOTS BOOTS – it’s what we always do! “We” meaning men.

This is the best men’s mental awareness month movie of all time, showing you there’s nothing worse for men’s mental health than patriarchy and nothing more necessary than a boy’s healthy relationship with his mother.

My mother died from cancer and had a very loose hold on reality for her final years of her life. It was traumatic for me. I cried like a baby throughout the entire sequence with Dr. Kelson. You’re probably thinking, “Oh, so you can just like the movie because you personally relate so much to it?”

YES!!! YES!!! THAT’S WHAT ART IS FOR!! Movies are meant to make you empathize with people in situations as far removed from you and yours as possible and then hit you in the exact center of your identity. You get this sublime moment where you feel, for a brief second, like you’re not alone, people have felt the way you feel, been through what you’re going through, many times over and survived.

I think there are two kinds of people: people who love movies, they watch lots and lots of them, and get a thrill out of being surprised—especially experiencing that feeling in a blockbuster or a franchise sequel. Then there are people who say they want unique experiences in the cinema but they’re lying to themselves. They want the same thing over and over, and they get upset when a movie is not exactly what they expected. They’re not even critiquing the movie, they’re critiquing what they thought the movie was going to be.

I have made multiple short form videos about this movie and talked about it for hours on the Streaming Things podcast, if you’re interested. I also interviewed Danny Boyle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Jodie Comer prior the film’s release.

If you’re hoping to hear my thoughts on Twinless, or Together, or maybe Rebuilding, Seeds, or Sorry, Baby, you won’t find them here. Sorry, baby—I didn’t watch them. You might be thinking, “but…didn’t you pay thousands of dollars to travel to the mountains of Utah specifically to watch those movies and tell us about them?”

Yes, yes I did.

Every journey from my home has its challenges for a guy like me. I’m a man of strict, simple routine. I’m certainly not agoraphobic but I’m a bit reclusive, very gregarious in small bursts. I love people but mostly in the way that you love your politically controversial grandfather, from afar; let’s hang out at Thanksgiving dinner and hospice, other than that we’ll text.

It’s not you, it’s me. I suffer from migraines, eczema, and a severe anxiety disorder that is all the more debilitating because I talk when I’m nervous. I’ll blurt out the most personal grave-taker to fill a silence, evinced by the title of this article. If you’ve ever been stuck at party, head pounding, scratching ferociously at your thighs, convinced you’re having a heart attack while some dude is droning on about the future of cryptocurrency, you know my pain. These three things can converge into an embarrassing cocktail if I’m not careful. It’s best to be highly prepared for social situations.

I’ve written before about how much I love film festivals. They’re typically a blissful exception to my experience of going outside (probably because most of my time at them is spent watching movies). This particular Sundance Film Festival, though, I had some sort of stomach bug in addition to everything else. It could have been the stress of some personal things, or the travel itself, maybe a virus, something I ate, I don’t know.

I felt queasy the entire time. The first three or four days I’m not sure I spoke to anyone at all. I was walking everywhere, mostly the press theater, trudging through the snow with the blistering Mormon wind beating my cheeks like they stole its Nintendo. For every film you have to wait in a line for about an hour or so, depending on the movie and, because I was by myself and didn’t feel well, this was brutal. There were no major red flags, just some general malaise I chalked up to jet lag, or loneliness.

Subscribe now

By the fifth day I was ready to leave but I had three days left to go and I had only seen five movies, most of which I didn’t like. I was miserably depressed, angry at myself for squandering this opportunity. So many people would kill to be at the Sundance Film Festival and there I was, curled up in bed in the Airbnb, pining for home.

Get up. Go talk to people, make connections, watch the movies, you fool! That’s what I told myself. I struggled out of bed and trudged over to the Eccles theater, which is where all the big premieres open to the public go down. I had wonderful times at that theater last year.

I stood in line for a while and all seemed well. I even spoke to the people around me in line and they were lovely. I bumped into John Magaro and told him how wonderful he was in Omaha. Ah, this is nice. “Now, this, is podracing,” I thought. I eventually made it from the cold into the theater itself, which is very old. It doesn’t even have stadium seating, just a slight slope to the floor. The Eccles Theater seats around 1200 people, using those old school little chairs where your knees are touching the chair in front of you and you’re intimately sharing armrests with your neighbors. The rows are long, too, hundreds of seats together and the only way in or out of each row is on either side of the big auditorium—there is no aisle in the middle to break it up.

Very much overconfident, I sat in the middle. My stomach was already gurgling as I waited for the room to fill and the show to start but I figured it would pass. After all, there was no way God would smite me with a bout of diarrhea at the world premiere of this movie surrounded by a thousand strangers.

I was wrong. It turns out God would totally do that. The moment the lights dimmed and the pre-roll with all of the Sundance sponsors filled the screen my stomach started doing an impression of a Simone Biles routine. It felt like I had eaten kettle bells. I was squirming in that tiny seat for the first forty minutes of that movie. I stole panicked glances to my left and to my right periodically, surveying my exits like James Bond, but if James Bond desperately had to shit.

Now, I typically don’t leave a movie, ever, not even to pee. I’ll walk out of a movie at a film festival, but only to go see a different movie. Remember, in this moment there are over a hundred people on either side of me and we’re cramped in like cinephile sardines. The thought of having to stumble over all of them in the dark is only slightly more appealing than shitting my pants somewhere near John Magaro.

And remember I didn’t know I had to poop. It could just be gas, but even if you could trust a fart with stakes this high, and you definitely couldn’t, that’s hardly more socially acceptable. Like some sort of IBS Sherlock Holmes, I judged from the intensity and frequency of the cramps that any fart, if fart it be, had a 97% chance of being both loud and stinky. The smell and timbre of that flatulence would forever ostracize me from the film community. I would be persona non grata, excommunicado like a gassy John Wick.

No, no, that’s it, I must go, thought. I stood up and went for it, choosing to go to the right. Those poor bastards. I’m 6’2” and 220 pounds and in that small space in the dark there was no avoiding it; I tapped every other person on the back of their head with my left elbow, and stepped on every third foot with my right boot. Like Cersei Lannister, naked and shaven, trudging from the Great Sept of Baelor I made my walk of shame to the bathroom, but instead of a tolling bell and shouts of “SHAME!” to mark my steps it was a raucous round of walking farts, which in the sudden commotion had now demanded to squeak forth.

Safe in the bathroom, on that nasty public toilet, I booked an early flight home, perhaps never to return. Oh, and the name of that movie? You’ll never believe it.

It’s called Bubble and Squeak. Yeah. Tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Leave a comment

You might as well just ask “What’s the point?” It’s a good question. You may come up with something powerfully Existential, mysteriously Fatalistic, or *shudders* depressingly Utilitarian. All of the answers, though, are just different jackets for the scarecrow of purpose we raise up to frighten away ennui. The why of it all is always in flux, in truth, and the asking of the question, the seeking, is the answer in itself.

Act I: Escapism

Why do I watch so many movies?

In the beginning I had a 27” TV that offered a 4:3 archway to freedom. If Mom and Dad were fighting again, if my brothers were moving away to live with their “real Dad,” if I shit my pants in gym class and everyone knew…I’d simply change the channel. Romancing the Stone is on. We can’t afford the rent? Who cares, it’s Shark Week!

I lived in a small apartment less than a mile down the road from a video store called Movie Warehouse. It was right next to the grocery store so while Mom was spending her food stamps and carefully cut coupons I could wander the aisles in search of my next release. Every movie was a furlough from the prison of self, approximately 90 minutes where I could be someone, somewhere, anywhere else. It was my Golden Ticket.

It was usually an action movie. I wanted big muscles, guns, and beautiful women. I wanted to be the arbiter of justice. Hard Target, Kickboxer, Bloodsport, anything with JCVD. Lethal Weapon, yeah, now we’re talking. Nobody regulated what I was renting. I thought Rated “R” stood for “Really fucking cool.” I wanted blood, guts, bombs and, if I was really lucky, boobs.

Only once did my mother step in to stop me. I brought my selections to the counter and, as usual, my mom didn’t even look at them. That day the Movie Warehouse clerk, Brad, betrayed me. He took a long look at my coveted copy of Quills, the Marquis de Sade biopic starring Geoffrey Rush, and said to my mother, “I don’t think this is appropriate for him to watch.” She said, “Oh, Chris, you know better. Go put that back.”

Et tu, Brad? Brad. Fucking Brad. More like Judas. It stung all the more because my mom was only pretending to care due to social pressure. I was the victim of my mother’s desire to be seen as a typical suburban mom, not the kind who chain-smokes Winston Light 100s, cusses like a sailor, and gives her son sips of Bailey’s Irish Creme, certainly not the kind who lets her kid watch Quills.

There was another employee at Movie Warehouse—her name was Sally. Sally was the older sister of a girl that I loved, the kind of potent, melodramatic love that only a 13-year-old can muster. She had jet-black hair cut in a bob like Mia Wallace, was covered in tattoos and piercings. Sally was always chewing gum and blowing bubbles, and in between each bubble bursting she helped guide my taste in music and movies.

I’d rush to the counter with Universal Soldier or Speed or Demolition Man and she’d roll her eyes, “Again? Hang on.” She’d vault the counter and saunter in her Chucks to an unseen aisle while I waited, confused, until she returned. “This is Clerks, it’s so funny, and this is American History X.”

“Is that funny?”

“Umm, no, here, take Ghost World, too.”

Thanks, Sally. Every time being me became too much I could retreat into these worlds, comforted by the most important maxim of the universe: Be Kind, Please Rewind.

Subscribe now

Act II: Edification

Eventually your tastes begin to form and that’s a double-edged sword. You don’t want to become too set in your ways and develop contempt prior to investigation. No matter how many movies you’ve seen there’s a whole wide world of discovery hiding exactly in the place you’re sure you won’t find it.

In my late teens I started to read books on film, like survey courses on the history of cinema. I read movie bloggers, critics, and tons of “Movies You Have To Watch Before You Die” listicles. I didn’t really want to watch most of them, but sometimes I’d force myself, thinking, “God, I hope it’s not a musical.”

This is where I found City of God and Battle Royale instead of rewatching Snatch or Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the 50th time. I plowed through the riches of Scorsese, Coppola, and Kubrick. I found Michael Mann and David Fincher and realized there was more to Spielberg than Jurassic Park. Cinema, like life, finds a way.

I was watching not just to be someone else but to learn how movies were made, what movies could be. I started to realize that stories weren’t just the way that humans passed the time—they were the way we made sense of time passing at all.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

- Søren Kierkegaard.

Act III: Empathy

I still watch movies to escape, like Snake Plissken, from my circumstances. I certainly still watch them to learn things about the craft itself and the world at large, but there are more powerful forces at work. The most beautiful thing a movie can give me is a respite from the debilitating desire to be understood, replacing that soul-corroding burden with an eagerness to understand.

I can enter the mind of a person living on the other side of the world, or 600 years ago, traversing space and time to inhabit their skin for a couple of hours. I have fought as a gladiator in the Colosseum of Ancient Rome and battled arachnids on Klendathu. I’m doing my part, too. I’ve been a troubled genius working as a janitor at MIT. I founded Facebook. I have been an assassin known to many as the Baba Yaga.

A movie can allow me the briefest glimpse of what it might be like to walk to my car through a dark alley as a young woman or spend decades in prison convicted of a crime I didn’t commit. I don’t know what either of those things are like, not really, but now I know that I don’t know and there is power in that.

Then there’s the beauty of the similarities, all the myriad ways that these characters from all across the universe are just like me. They love, they lust, they lose and hunger in all the same ways. I am alone in a dark room looking at lights on a wall, connected to fellow human beings more profoundly than I was walking beside them on the busy street outside.

Those are the moments I live for, when I see a universal truth reflected on screen that I feared was an experience unique only to me. In my Past Lives screening I watched Nora mourn the gasping love she still felt for an old friend even as she lived happily with her husband. People don’t talk about shit like that, you’re not allowed to admit it, but movies do.

What I’ve learned over time is that this is only a heightened experience if you’re also experiencing things. You can’t just touch grass occasionally, you need to full-on frolic every now and then. Travel to strange cities. Snowboard, skydive, eat snails and alligators. Make love, fall down, jump off cliffs (into water). Stories can only reflect and enhance a life that is being lived.

That’s why I watch movies.

“So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.” - Sean, Good Will Hunting

Get more from Kit Lazer in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Leave a comment

Share

Bookworm was released in theaters in the US a couple o…

Read more

It took me quite a few films to get to any that I really loved, I was losing heart, but they eventually came! Man, there was some a…

Read more

Subscribe now

…

Read more

I’ll do short reviews of each one of the films, most of which will be exclusive to this page here on Substack. You can find the list here to see what’s coming.

Subscribe now

Get more from Kit Lazer in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

My Uber driver was particularly chatty on the way to the airport. I know, I know, that sounds awful, but in this case I was happy to converse; he wanted to talk about movies. He had found out that I was in Austin for the Fantastic Fest Film Festival and thought that was intriguing, though I imagine the bar is pretty low at 5am.

“I haven’t been to a movie theater since The Batman,” he said. That movie premiered in March of 2022, 2 and 1/2 years before our conversation. I don’t know how many movies I’ve gone to see in that time—300? 500?—but it immediately struck me, the inescapable truth of the universe:

I was the weird one. As my backpack and I slid to and fro along the god-knows-what stains in the backseat of that Nissan Versa, with my talkative temporary chauffeur forsaking safety in favor of his next fare, I knew beyond a doubt that his experience was the more common one. Most people don’t care that much about movies.

That made me sad. No, not because they’re missing out on life-changing art, that’s none of my business. He probably does a bunch of cool shit I don’t do. I knew I was leaving my people, people that were going to catch a flight home after watching thirty movies in a week and likely catch a screening of Megalopolis as soon as they unpack. True celluloid sickos, the screen fiends, motherfuckers raised by John Carpenter and Hayao Miyazaki.

Look, I’ve got a lot of friends at home. Loyal, wonderful people, most of whom I met when I was getting sober over twelve years ago, so we’re trauma-bonded for life. One I’ve known since I was ten. I would quite literally die if that would help them, for some reason (what are we, in Squid Game in this hypothetical?). I’ve got a beautiful wife and two children that mostly enjoy my company. They’re my world, entirely and for all time, but my daughter doesn’t know shit about Park Chan-wook, and that’s a bummer (she’s two).

Subscribe now

What I’m trying to say is that it’s a bizarre feeling, spending so much time around the same people a couple of times a year. They understand a huge piece of you in a way most people never will. Will you rewatch all ten Saw movies when the eleventh one comes out so that you can rank them? No? Then you don’t get it, sorry.

You might be thinking, “well, that’s your job,” but that’s not true! Most of us don’t do this full time and I just quit my real job a few months ago. We’re just weird! We have no choice, the power of cinema compels us. I stood out in the Austin heat talking about God and Hugh Grant with a guy named Zach for an hour in the middle of the night, a guy I'd only physically met two or three times prior. I’m opening up like he’s the priest from my village who helped deliver me into this world but he’s just a nice guy who occasionally likes my tweets.

He’s my friend. They’re all my friends, some of my best friends, but I don’t fucking know them. I’m not even positive they like me all that much because they’re so damn nice I would never know but they can quote Hot Rod and they laugh when I do my Forrest Gump impression. No one ever laughs when I do my Forrest Gump impression at family functions or the DMV (which is stupid cuz it’s fucking hilarious). It might be offensive now that I think about it, I’m not sure.

I suppose people get to feel this sort of thing in many different ways. Maybe it’s why so many people join religions, or cults. I drank the kool-aid of cinema. I have a friend that loves rock climbing and perhaps he feels similarly when he meets someone who also knows forty-seven different ways to tie a knot. Maybe he should go to a knot convention or something. If they don’t have those they should make one. Call it Knot Or Nah?

Find your tribe, because life is a strange thing. You may find yourself surrounded by friends and family and feel more alone than you’ve ever felt in your life. I don’t know why that is. But sometimes, in a foreign place and in the company of strangers, you can share a moment of complete understanding. It’s fleeting so you have to pay close attention.

It’s like a movie.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
    For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Subscribe now

Get more from Kit Lazer in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Read more

With that goal in mind, this year I let the audience choose the movies for me. Here are all 31 of the best, scariest, most repulsive horror flicks that people suggested. It’s …

Read more

Subscribe to get more updates, exclusive content, and in general support my work. Thank you!

I haven’t been as active on here as I’d like due to some medical issues my family and I have been struggling with for the past few months, but we should find out some crucial information about that very soon. The plan (cue God laughing) is to post exclusive content here several times weekly at the free and subscriber-only tiers and post weekly to my YouTube, in addition to what I do on TikTok and Instagram.

Subscribe now

September 5th

Fight Night - Peacock

Apollo 13: Survival - Netflix

The Perfect Couple - Netflix

September 6th

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice - Theaters

Rebel Ridge - Netflix

My actual most anticipated of the month and if you don’t know why then you need to watch Blue Ruin and Green Room right now.

Read more

These people I had been watching for months started to follow me. Then the people I had been listening to and reading for a decade started to follow me. Then celebrities started to follow me. I got invited to big events and premieres. I got to interview actors and directors. I went to Sundance and SXSW. Wow. I made it. This is great.

Right?

As far back as I can remember, I wanted to talk about movies online. Sort of. At first, I dreamed of selling a gigantic, high fantasy tome. I’ve spent countless hours inventing worlds, drawing maps for made-up lands that have their own religions, languages, and histories. Put “Hugo Award winning novelist” on my tombstone, please.

In my teenage years things took a sharp turn. I was still obsessed with elves and wizards but my gaze shifted from Mordor to Hollywood. I found L.A. Confidential, Pulp Fiction, and Trainspotting. My humor was shaped into a strange alloy of Clerks, South Park, and Monty Python. I read every book I could on writing screenplays from people like Syd Field, Blake Snyder, and Robert McKee. I plotted my scripts beat for beat on index cards.

But I was high. Like, really, really high. I dropped out of college and hit the streets more than the books. I took a multi-year detour through homelessness and despair and, by the time I arrived at sobriety in my early 20s, I had lost my dreams of Oscars and Pulitzers and just wanted a clean apartment and a fridge full of food.

Subscribe now

It took another few years of marveling at basic life necessities before the old itch crept back in. It started with a podcast. While mowing my lawn I found The Slashfilmcast (it’s called the Filmcast now) and it was like a gateway drug. Three men reviewing movies every Tuesday—laughing, crying, interacting with fan emails and interviewing Jeremy Saulnier, Kevin Smith, and Rian Johnson. I thought, “Wait, Kevin Smith will talk to you if you have a podcast?”

Kevin Smith will talk to anyone, but I didn’t know that at the time. I found other podcasts: Filmspotting, Nerdist, Blank Check, Cast of Kings, Storm of Spoilers. I devoured them all. I read all the blogs. Slashfilm, Screenrant, Birth Movies Death. Variety, Deadline, Rogerebert.com.

I bought books about movies by Patton Oswalt and Owen Gleiberman. Like Captain Barbossa, I could never be satiated. Soon it wasn’t just mowing the lawn or commuting to work, it was while working. I got some cheap wireless headphones and listened to the cinephiles talk all day while rolling dough or doing dishes at the pizzeria where I worked.

Before long, I started my own podcast. It was awful and no one listened so I started another one. It was better but we needed better equipment. I applied to every entertainment website in existence but none of them responded. I started my own website. It was awful and no one read it. I took a bunch of gigs for lesser sites that paid in exposure. I wrote garbage and clickbait that everyone I admired loathed if they read it at all.

I just wanted to be a part of the club. At this point I figured I would never even finish my novel, much less sell it, and I probably wasn’t a very good screenwriter, either. I just wanted to hang out with someone who knew the difference between tilt and pan. I wanted to see movies before anyone else and get paid to talk about the work I used to dream of making. That seemed reasonable.

I wanted to be a professional nerd.

I existed in this purgatory for about five years. I got great jobs in sales and marketing, making more money than someone with my life choices could expect but it was never enough. I’d be in my office reading Priscilla Page articles or watching Mikey Neumann videos on YouTube. I’d call off work to make a short film or go see John Wick Chapter Two. Everyone around me wanted to get promoted and retire early, I just wanted to go to Sundance and Comic Con.

What finally worked, after all of that, no one could have seen coming: a global pandemic and a strange new social media app called TikTok. All through the pandemic and multiple quarantines my wife watched TikTok on the couch, laughing maniacally. She was having so much fun. I resisted for a year. It seemed beneath me and my intellectual pursuit of Call of Duty: Warzone.

I remember the day I finally downloaded the app. I was at work (of course, what else am I going to do, work?) and at first I saw strange dances and some odd melodrama about something called “womb lands”. But I also saw people talking about movies. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Is this a thing?

I watched for a few months, skeptical. Is anyone going to take these people seriously? Is this worth my time? “I’m already working so hard on the podcast,” I thought. Then I saw a “Tiktoker” hosting the red carpet of The Batman premiere.

Holy fucking shit.

I put everything I had into TikTok. I quit my six-figure sales job (I hated it anyway), cutting my pay by 50% to give myself more time to talk about movies. I’d wake up early to make a video before I went into work. I’d come home and watch the newest releases and go Live.

It worked. A thousand followers. Ten thousand. Fifty thousand. I started getting PR packages and screeners in the mail. My daughter was born. A hundred thousand followers, two hundred thousand followers, oh my god, it’s working! It’s working! FINALLY!

These people I had been watching for months started to follow me. Then the people I had been listening to and reading for a decade started to follow me. I got invited to big events and premieres. I got to interview actors and directors. I went to Sundance and SXSW. Wow. I made it. This is great.

Right?

It is and it isn’t. I don’t want to be dramatic or sound ungrateful. I’ve worked countless jobs in restaurants, behind desks, painting houses, even pouring concrete. There are so many people working thankless, exhausting jobs that actually keep society functioning, that make a tangible difference in peoples’ lives. I wouldn’t go back to any of the other jobs I’ve done before willingly.

But, man, it isn’t like I thought. There’s something about waking up for work in the morning, drinking your coffee, and immediately reading dozens of people telling you to eat a dick that isn’t great for your mental health. Convincing your friends and family you can’t attend the function because you’re working, when your work is watching Twisters, isn’t easy, either.

In the beginning I thought I could fix the internet, kind of. I thought if I just stayed relentlessly positive, only interacted with the rational people, and worked hard I could build a community of people that understood the subjectivity of art. I wasn’t completely wrong—I’ve managed to do that, for the most part. What I didn’t know is that, despite its benefits, I was choosing a career in which I would never be good enough, walking a path teeming with buzzards and the rotting corpses of better, stronger, smarter people.

I’ve met a lot of wonderful people, people who check-in and offer kind words, a supportive smile, and plenty of free advice. Many of the veterans say, “Do not read the comments.” One of them even said to hire someone to post all of my work and monitor things for me. Don’t engage. That would work.

The problem with that is it takes me right back where I started. In a room, alone, just me and a screen.

If I do that, what was the point of all of this?

The truth is, my unhappiness has nothing to do with the trolls, the views, or what events I’m invited to. If my internal self-worth is a reflection of the external world it’s only because it was lacking to begin with. Being chronically online might have been a mistake but being chronically selfish is just as painful. Maybe, just maybe, I have something to add to the stream of life and, with mortality rushing at me at twenty-four frames per second, I should get to it. It’s only meaningless if you choose not to add meaning.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

Subscribe now

He chooses interesting roles and, no matter the project, brings a depth and wry humor that is endlessly entertaining to watch. As it turns o…

Read more

July was a great month for movie theaters but not the best month for me personally. Two of my most anticipated new releases, Maxxxine and Longlegs, left me cold. Now it’s August, my birthday month, and I’m ready for Alien: Romulus and Trap to take me to cinematic Valhalla.

August 1st

Batman: Caped Crusader - Prime Video

It’s a throwback-style show for fans of Batman The Animated Series, set in 1940s Gotham. It’s got noir vibes, the classic detective feel, and the famous rogues gallery. I’ve seen the whole show, it’s bat-tastic!

August 2nd

Trap - Theaters

You’re either a fan of M Night Shyamalan, or you’re not, at this point. Fans will delight in this silly thriller about a serial killer just trying to bond with his daughter. Saleka, M Night’s daughter, co-stars in and wrote and performed all of the songs in the movie. Trap, like being a girl dad, is delightful.

Kneecap - Theaters

The based-on-a-real-hip-hop-trio-from-Ireland story starring said trio and Michael Fassbender. I missed it at Sundance, SXSW, and its US premiere so far. I plan on catching it soon, I’ve heard good things.

Harold and the Purple Crayon - Theaters

Zachary Levi and a magical crayon, or something. Not sure I’ll be watching this one. Let me know what you think!

Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie - Netflix

I unfortunately did watch this one! Scariest movie of the year. Definitely cheeks.

Sing Sing - Theater Expansion

I’m hearing this might be the best movie of the year, Best Actor material for Colman Domingo, and at SXSW I saw the Road House remake instead of this and now it’s not playing anywhere near me. So. There’s that.

Coup! - Theaters

I’ve got the screener, I’ll let you know soon! I do love some Peter Sarsgaard (he was great in Presumed Innocent on AppleTV+).

Rebel Moon: The Director’s Cut - Netflix

Both Part One and Part Two dropped on Netflix yesterday. It’s basically one near-seven-hour movie. Is it better than the version we got last year? I think so. The violence, sex, and slow motion are all gratuitous and that, at least, makes it interesting. It’s still derivative and lacking in character development but not without merit for fans of fantasy science fiction and Anthony Hopkins as a robot.

Subscribe now

Read more

Read more

I promise I have better equipment now, don’t worry.

Share Movies Are Therapy

If you’ve seen Twisters (and the box office numbers indi…

Read more

I started with Disney classics and, oddly (for my age), 80s action schlock and the entire Van Damme oeuvre, but my Linklater obsession hit…

Read more

Boneyard - Video On Demand

A thriller starring, yes, 50 Cent and Mel Gibson.

An FBI special agent and the Albuquerque police department hunt for a serial killer nicknamed The Bone Collector. The chief of police and one of his officers, however, believe someone in the department may be the killer.

Chestnut - Video On Demand

A sapphic romance starring Natalia Dyer from Stranger Things.

A recent graduate becomes entangled in a relationship with a man and a woman during the summer after college.

July 3rd

Despicable Me 4 - Theaters

Yes, there is a fourth one.

Gru and Lucy and their girls — Margo, Edith and Agnes — welcome a new member to the Gru family, Gru Jr., who is intent on tormenting his dad. Gru faces a new nemesis in Maxime Le Mal and his femme fatale girlfriend Valentina, and the family is forced to go on the run.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. - Netflix

Yes, there is a fourth one.

Forty years after his unforgettable first case in Beverly Hills, Detroit cop Axel Foley returns to do what he does best: solve crimes and cause chaos.

Subscribe now

July 4th

KILL - Theaters

An ultra-violent Indian film that already has a remake from Chad Stahelski in the works. Just see this one—I got to check it out at Fantastic Fest last year and it’s great. Die Hard on a train.

When an army commando finds out his true love is engaged against her will, he boards a New Dehli-bound train in a daring quest to derail the arranged marriage. But when a gang of knife-wielding thieves begin to terrorize innocent passengers on his train, the commando takes them on himself in a death-defying kill-spree to save those around him — turning what should have been a typical commute into an adrenaline-fueled thrill ride.

Space Cadet - Prime Video

Tiffany “Rex” Simpson has always dreamed of going to space, and her “doctored” application lands her in NASA’s ultra-competitive astronaut training program. In over her head, can this Florida girl rely on her quick wits, moxie and determination to get through training and into the cosmos before she blows her cover?

July 5th

Maxxxine - Theaters

I mean, she's a star.

In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.

Mother, Couch - Theaters (Limited release)

This wasn’t on my radar at all but I’m here for the cast (Taylor Russell hive rise!).

The members of a dysfunctional family find themselves mysteriously trapped in an antiquated furniture store when their elderly matriarch suddenly refuses to get up from one of the display couches. Reluctantly assembled, her three estranged children – David, Gruffudd, and Linda – must figure out how to escape this bizarre predicament. With the help of the store managers, Marco & Marcus, and their daughter Bella the siblings embark on a mind-bending odyssey that forces them to face life-altering truths about their own lives and upbringing.

July 10th

Sunny - Apple TV+

Apple TV continues to be the most underrated streaming service available.

Follows Suzie, an American woman living in Japan, and Sunny, a domestic robot made by her husband's company, as they uncover the dark truth of what really happened to Suzie's husband and son who disappeared in a mysterious plane crash.

July 11th

Sausage Party: Foodtopia - Prime Video

I don't know, man, I’m just trying to show you everything that’s coming out.

Following the events of the 2016 film, Frank, Brenda, Barry, and Sammy try to build their own food society.

July 12th

Longlegs - Theaters

My most anticipated release of the month, maybe the year.

In pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.

Read more