Tag: movies
1986 - lookout mountain
I don't remember the exact day the tape slid into our VCR, but I know the precise moment my brother Matthew and I realized it was perfect. For a lot of critics in August of 1986, The Transformers: The Movie was a jarring shock to the system. They complained about the lack of setup. They wanted exposition; they wanted an explanation. But Matthew and I? We didn't need any of that. We loved that it dropped us headfirst into the smoke and gears of a brewing cosmic war without holding our hands. With...
Letterboxd, the social film review site
Seeing as how I have had a lot of time on my own recently whilst recovering, I decided to sign up for Letterboxd. It's a site where you can log which films you have watched and when, review them, and see what your friends have watched and reviewed. Letterboxd has been around for some time,...
Let's talk about Joe Black
Just recently I watched Meet Joe Black again. I don't know how long it's been since the last time, but I know it's been at least a few years. And woah, was it different from what I remembered. You know how they say that after you grow a certain age you start appreciating stuff you did not before? Well, it immediately rang a bell after seeing this movie again. It's not as boring, not as cheesy and I enjoyed it in a much different way than before — but still as long as I remembered. I found it qui...
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
This is a critique of the Frieren: Beyond Journey's End series's season 1
The Phoenician Scheme Critique
This is a critique of The Phoenician Scheme (2025) by Wes Anderson.
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (5/5)
In Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (5/5) erzählt Michael J. Fox seine Erfolgsgeschichte, steht aber auch zu seiner Verletzlichkeit. Ein warmherziges, inspirierendes und vor allem lebensbejahendes Porträt, eines großartigen Menschen. Fand ich ähnlich bewegend wie die Christopher Reeve Story.
Absolute Giganten (5/5)
Das, meine Damen und Herren, ist Absolute Giganten, der beste deutsche Film. Ich weiß gar nicht, wie oft ich diesen Film schon gesehen habe. Und dann swipe ich gerade so durch die ZDF-Mediathek, und da ist er. Alles wieder da. Jede Szene, jedes Zitat, allen voran dieses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbT4jGHUlPA Weisst du was ich manchmal denke? Es müsste immer Musik da sein. Bei allem was du machst. Und wenns so richtig scheisse ist, dann ist wenigstens noch die Musik da. Und an der Stelle wo, wo es am allerschönsten ist, da müsste die Platte springen und du hörst immer nur diesen einen Moment. Floyd zu Telsa, Absolute Giganten Hamburg in den 90ern, rau, schmutzig und auch irgendwie aufregend. Floyd, Ricco, Walter und eine letzte gemeinsame Nacht, bevor das Leben sie auseinander reißt. Freundschaft, Aufbruch, Abschied, große Träume, die kaum in diese Welt passen. Die Bilder des Films brennen sich ein für alle Ewigkeit. Der Soundtrack trifft direkt ins Herz, erzeugt Gänsehaut und…
Reading/Playing/Watching, 5/5/25
Stuff I'm Reading I'd rather read the prompt - great blog post about LLMs in a university environment. Nicely sums up a lot of my thoughts about LLM-aided writing, which is that using an LLM defeats the point! "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." Write bad essays! That's how you learn! Bizarro World - a 2007 essay on the competitive retro gaming scene, in which the author discovers his wife is the best Gameboy Tetris player in the world. Really wild to revisit a time before Twitch w
Things I Am Consuming: 4.5.2025
It's the weekend, I've got no brilliant tech tutorials in my pocket and I have no particular desire to write about societal collapse for at least a little bit. So I'm just gonna write about some stuff I enjoyed this week. I've finally burned out on videogames for a bit after spending a few weeks housing my backlog of visual novels and I'm finally getting back on my book/show/movie shit. There appears to be a throughline of lore-heavy nerd escapism which frankly I deserve. “Children are dying."
The New DVD Bargain Bin
A major studio is apparently treating YouTube as a place to drop some of its archive films that have lost their cinematic luster. My mind is admittedly blown.
2024 in review
Wow, what a year. To address the elephant in the room up front: on the macro scale, things are bleak. Electing a fascist for economic reasons still means you elected a fascist. That said fascist proceeded to nominate a clown car full of people I wouldn't trust to be in the same room as my children let alone watch my children is as depressing as it was predictable. A terrible person selects terrible people to (assuredly) do terrible things. Fuck .
███████ Alert
The history of everyone’s favorite attempt to keep the suspense going for just a little bit longer, the spoiler alert. People who spoil things are obviously evil. Obviously.
Mechanical Marine Mammals
Ever think about what it takes to make an animatronic whale? No? Well, we have, and soon, so will you.
When Movies Get Canned
In the wake of the cancellation of the nearly complete Batgirl, a list of films that are generally thought to have been complete but never saw release for some reason.
Box Office No-Go
Why the conflict over the movie industry’s embrace of video on demand reflects a century-long symbiotic relationship gone sour. AMC is just Trollin’.
Now You See It …
A brief history of invisibility on screen, one of the most effective special effects ever created in film.
You Never Know What You’re Gonna Get
An inside look at one of the strangest restaurant chains in recent history in honor of the 25th anniversary of the movie that inspired its existence.
The Lazarus Libraries
What happens when “lost” films and television shows become found once again—and what that does to the work’s cultural legacy.
Keep Your Composure
What’s it like to be a film composer, anyway? An expert on the subject pads our knowledge of film composition, what might be cinema’s most subtle art form.
The Sound and the Fury
How sound design—such as the iconic Indiana Jones whip noise—has come to define the film industry almost as much as all the on-screen effects.
The Same Name Game
It’s not every day you watch a movie in which you share the same name as the lead character. I did, and it was a supremely dissonant experience.