– By James Powers – Editor’s Note: Potential Spoilers Below for Season 1 of ‘Dark’ Most of us have probably had the freaky experience, in some high school world lit class, of reading Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex. In case you don’t remember, that’s the one in which the doomed protagonist tries and fails to avoid the unsavory destiny pronounced for …
Striking Out with ‘Striking Vipers’; What ‘Black Mirror’ Gets Wrong About Relationships
– By Joe Campbell – Spoilers below for the Black Mirror episode ‘Striking Vipers’. Black Mirror has been heralded as the new Twilight Zone, so much so that when CBS debuted a modern version of The Twilight Zone, many people wondered what the point was in a world where Black Mirror already existed. Created by British writer Charlie Brooker and named …
Deadwood: A Case Study on How to Execute a Masterful Opening Scene
– By Matthew Sawczyn – On May 31st, in a mere few hours, HBO’s critically acclaimed Deadwood will revive itself for one final shootout, in its culminating feature film of the same name. One final time, we viewers will set foot on the muddy thoroughfare of that the seedy mining town, seeking our fortune with the unfortunates. Though universally praised …
The Emptiness of Success in ‘Fosse/Verdon’
– By Sam Hendrian – “You happy now?” These words are spoken by the perceptive writer Paddy Chayefsky (Norbert Leo Butz) to his troubled best friend Bob Fosse (Sam Rockwell) as he sits with a lap-full of awards in the backseat of a limo, and they brilliantly summarize the thematic core of FX’s biographical mini-series Fosse/Verdon. The story of legendary …
Hulu’s ‘Ramy’ Is an Important Show – But Not Quite a Good One
– By James Powers – A strange little scene in Hulu’s new show Ramy tragicomically highlights the average American’s tortured relationship with traditional religion. The setting is New Jersey, in the midst of Islam’s penitential season of Ramadan, outside a halal restaurant. A loutish construction worker, having just witnessed a group of Muslim men praying fajr together in the parking …
Putting the Lion Before the Horse: Screenwriting Lessons From “The Long Night”
– By Matthew Sawczyn – Spoilers Below for Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 3 The battle is over. Melisandre sheds her necklace. Drained, worn, haggered, she walks out into the bitter snow… and dies. CUT TO BLACK. First, extreme gratitude to the cast and crew of Game of Thrones. They probably felt like Melisandre after all was said and …
Seven Traumatized Children Under One Umbrella Academy
– By Carly Twehous – [Spoilers Ahead] At a time when the superhero origin story consumes nearly every available screen, so often audiences get caught up in the bright colors, over-the-top special effects, and elaborate villains intent on world domination, that people begin forget the one thing that makes superheroes so compelling: the hero’s relentless quest to fight not only …
‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ – A Timely Exploration of Human Dignity and the Futility of Violence
–By Sam Hendrian– This article contains Spoilers “We all have it coming, kid.” These legendary words from Clint Eastwood’s classic film Unforgiven also form the thematic core of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a feature-length anthology of Western short films from directors Joel and Ethan Coen. Recently released to Netflix, it masterfully employs both dark humor and haunting imagery to …
Its Own Trojan Horse: A Review of ‘Troy: Fall of a City’
– By Tyler Carlos – Contains Spoilers Storytelling has been a part of the world for thousands of years, and some of the first stories have lived on to become classics that are still told to this day. And with today’s technology, we are able to experience these stories in new and exciting ways. So it’s always a disappointment when …
Just Another Day in Paradise: ‘The Good Place’ Review
– By Carly Twehous – Some spoilers below Welcome! Everything is fine! This is the Good Place: A generalized, metaphysical “paradise” run exclusively on the arbitrary negative and positive energy put out into the universe. (Very Woodstock, I know.) Every action you do has a pre-assigned negative or positive value to it and your ultimate score determines if you spend …