DRIFTER is hard to talk about without giving up its tricks, but it's one of the ugliest, meanest, and oddest westerns I've ever seen, truly "revisionist" in how it flays the contradictory, often conservative values at the heart of the genre bare. the town is literally painted red
finally watched HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and loved it. a gothic horror where Eastwood uses his iconic status to subvert the classic western in the most morally scathing terms. how often can you say you saw something truly unlike anything else? a dark, strange and special movie
the Nine Inch Noize disc is incredible and I can't get over how the boys turned songs written over 30 years into a cohesive, brilliant album. if this was your first NIN, you'd just think this is their sound. it's a real achievement in sounding classic and contemporary all at once
have many thoughts on THE PITT finale but for now I'll just say Robby's arc this season was devastating and beautiful and real and Noah Wyle gave one of the best dramatic performances of the last several years. not everything this season was perfect, but that pretty much was
considering how much marketing feels desperate these days, it’s awesome Nolan keeps holding back 99% of the epic footage from trailers, the prologue, and marketing events for THE ODYSSEY. he knows what he has
the photos NASA is releasing of the moon mission are really incredible
I personally find the practice annoying –– locking down plans that far in advance sucks, I had hoped to see THE ODYSSEY with L.A. friends but I couldn't risk it so just bought locally, etc –– but when films need all the help they can get to become an Event I can't be mad
I've seen dozens and dozens of posts claiming this kind of marketing gimmick turns them off from the movie when it is incredibly obvious they're just mad they didn't get tickets lol. and in the process, just further eventizes whichever movie is being discussed
the most annoying thing about tickets going on sale 6-12 months in advance is how insanely effective it is –– tickets sell out in seconds, people angrily post how they are they didn't score any tickets, and all it does is built more scarcity and hype around the release
Malick paints Franz's village as an Edenic paradise before Nazism emerges and one by one Franz meets someone not only rationalizing their own complicity but disowns him for a lack of his; even priests and bishops shame him for his Kantian steadfastness. a great foil to SILENCE.
watched A HIDDEN LIFE for Easter and man, the film's unwavering rejection of complicity while asking hard questions about faith, suffering and moral obligation hits incredibly hard given everything that's been happening in the U.S. in the last 12 months. one of Malick's best
Happy Trans Day of Visibility!
We've just unlocked our Trans Cinema issue from 2023, guest edited by poet Spencer Williams. It is now (and forever!) entirely free.
PROJECT HAIL MARY and even THE MARTIAN also repeatedly pose ethical dilemmas around what it means to survive and what obligations we have to sacrifice for humankind (willingly or not). Pretending there’s “No social commentary” here is bizarre and obviously a political statement in itself
each version of STAR TREK has an episode (often multiple) where a crew member gets stranded and must learn to communicate with a foreign alien intelligence to survive. Weir doesn’t appear to be a particularly deep thinker but man, the politics of this sort of thing aren’t subtle
pretty disheartening quote considering PROJECT HAIL MARY is a lot like an episode of STAR TREK; it's a first contact story about mutual cooperation, where friendship transcends linguistic and cultural barriers. which yeah, absolutely makes it "political" and about social issues
this season of THE PITT started a bit slow but it's been incredibly effective watching everyone's slow descent to despair, climaxing into everyone telling Robbie he's acting like a fucking lunatic while Dana calls him out after what seems to be one of the worst days of her life
the HP footage (which I don't want to speak much about) looks "fine"-ish and basically as if David Yates did the first book only blander and smaller, but the artistic integrity of a project shamelessly recycling the aesthetics of the past is so low that it's spit it out whole
though they seem not to realize it, by endlessly regurgitating old properties, by stubbornly refusing to invest in what can feel fresh and inspiring, the big film studios are risking the very audiences they hope to keep. we need to feel the excitement of the new again.
I cannot express how sick I am of franchise nostalgia slop becoming the dominant cultural product of our time
Thank you!
I wrote about Best Picture winner ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, and how Anderson allegorizes revolution as a dad's confessional on time, parenting, and trying to support your kids to save a world you couldn't:
nextbestpicture.com/in-one-battl...
obviously Varda's always been a brilliant formalist, but she pulls off so many stylistic gambits here –– sudden bursts of close-ups, a montage of bodies as sensuous shapes, all the color dissolves, the camera using a tree to change focus as dancers change their partner mid-frame
finally saw LE BONHEUR and loved it, Varda's rictus portrait of doomed domesticity and solipsistic male violence; it reminded me of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK in how it corrupts picture-perfect spaces through haunting absences. one of the most upsetting endings I've ever seen
I wrote about THE SECRET AGENT for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, a hauntological thriller that shows how memory itself can be an act of resistance, doubling as a shield against regimes that seek to silence the future of their enemies:
nextbestpicture.com/how-the-secr...
like ordering assassins to hit Armando with a "hole in his mouth", nearly every action in THE SECRET AGENT centers the act of disrupting the collective memory, and thus the future, of those in Brazil, and I wanted to write about it:
nextbestpicture.com/how-the-secr...
I wrote about THE SECRET AGENT for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, a hauntological thriller that shows how memory itself can be an act of resistance, doubling as a shield against regimes that seek to silence the future of their enemies:
nextbestpicture.com/how-the-secr...
I wrote about the dreamy awe of Pandora, Jake and Neytiri's love story that turns into a family crucible, the series' reputation and why it may be wrong, and how Cameron's digicinema style makes Pandora feel real.
Each is covered in its own chapter:
brightwalldarkroom.com/2026/03/02/d...
I wrote 6,000 words on AVATAR for @brightwalldarkroom.com, diving into how James Cameron's stereoscopic dreamland is a conduit for a radical, transportive empathy that harkens back to the origins of cinema itself:
www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2026/03/02/d...
very proud of this piece <3
