Movies

Encore! Encore! - Avengers: Endgame (Encore)

The following contains spoilers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe but also definitely Avengers: Endgame. Seven years ago Avengers: Endgame was an experience unlike anything else Marvel had made. A final punctuation mark to a saga spanning more than twenty films, it somehow managed to do that while teasing a canvas

Movies

A Lowly Shoe Salesman - Oppenheimer

When Christopher Nolan announced that his first post-Warner Bros. film would be a biopic about the man who created the atom bomb, I can't say it filled me with any amount of fervor. Since June 15, 2005 I've been firmly in the Nolan tank, but.

Film

Feel It - Tenet

Christopher Nolan's time travel action thriller is what if Inception but better

Christopher Nolan

Life During Wartime - Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan's World War II epic turns a legendary miracle into a small, intimate, personal tone poem

Film

Out Into The Stars - Interstellar

There were two things about seeing Interstellar opening night. My friends and I went to the TCL Chinese theater in the heart of Hollywood. Its largest screen qualifies as IMAX, can seat almost a thousand people, and opening nights (or special screenings) produce big, big reactions from crowd-pleasers. There

Film

Feed People Hope to Poison Their Souls - The Dark Knight Rises

A sequel to The Dark Knight was asking diminishing returns. Heath Ledger's singular posthumous performance alone was enough reason to think maybe they shouldn't even attempt it. But that's not how Hollywood works. Are there any blockbusters that are willing to stop at just

Movies

Dream Closure - Inception

Rick & Morty's second episode is an A-story that exists to take the piss out of Inception. Co-creator Dan Harmon raged about the film online and hated it so much he burnt a precious half-hour of his new show lampooning a movie he thought was

Movies

Nothing Quite Like It... - The Dark Knight

Right before my most recent rewatching The Dark Knight, I put on the opening sequence of Heat for a point of comparison. Nolan has been very open about the influence Michael Mann's 90s crime epic masterpiece had in constructing his Batman Begins sequel, but watching it againreally is

Film

Life Is a Performance - The Prestige

The following contains spoilers for The Prestige One of the hottest (and most boring) takes on Inception is that the film itself is a metaphor for the filmmaking process. Dom (the director) puts together a grand heist (project), where Ariadne is a writer and Eames is an actor and Arthur

Monthly Check-in

July 2026 Check-In

This is so late. I'm so behind. June didn't have a check-in. Yikes. Sometimes the world shifts around and it takes a while to catch back up. With the school year ending and the summer starting, my job has really picked up in the last

Movies

The Dawn of Something New - Batman Begins

So I haven't seen Supergirl yet. Weak buzz (especially from voices I trust) has harshed my urgency, and it's fallen a bit in my priorities. It's a shame, too. I'm certainly not immune from feeling the pull of seeing one of my

Film

Cynicisometer - Disclosure Day

The following contains spoilers for Disclosure Day... Everyone knows Steven Spielberg. No one's name is more synonymous with the job of directing (and it's not clear what it would take for someone to usurp that mantle), and (as L.A. Times film critic Amy Nicholson once

Movies

Held At A Distance - Insomnia

Nolan's Iliad explores the films of Christopher Nolan through the prism of his talents as more than just a puzzle box guy. Following Memento, it's unsurprising that Nolan took a work-for-hire studio job next. What is surprising is that what his followup was not

Movies

In Need of a Good Schism - Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu

Despite having spent years in youth choir, partaken in dozens (hundreds?) of communions, and listened to dozens of random selections of scripture readings, my favorite part of a church service is the sermon. There's something about the monologue that draws me in. The structure of extended speech, the

Film

A Femme Fatale in a Male-centric Neo-Noir - Memento

Nolan's Iliad is an ongoing series exploring the works of Christopher Nolan on the eve of his next major motion picture The Odyssey. While lots of other places dissect Nolan as the grand puzzle master, he's far more interesting as a populist, emotionally grounded filmmaker. And

Film

Video Game Film Puberty - Mortal Kombat II

I wasn't planning to go to Mortal Kombat II on opening night, much less in IMAX at the go-to theater of my general area. Yet there I was, big bucket of popcorn on my lap, tucked in the middle of the third row, sitting next to a

Movies

Calling Card to Make the Calling Card - Following

Nolan's Iliad is an ongoing series exploring the works of filmmaker Christopher Nolan and what is it that got him there... On Christopher Nolan's first movie, his mother was in charge of catering. That's hard to imagine nowadays, where the dude has done some

Film

May 2026 Update

According to Ghost, this is my 150th entry. That's a crazy milestone. Last month was a bit of a roller coaster. A project at work took over a ton of my brain space and it was really hard to get out thoughts to write anything in the face

So Many People To Love - The Pitt s02e15

Last season, the Pittfest shooting served as a massive speed bump bridging the two, where once the last Pittfest patient cycled out, the center got back to business as usual. Here, though, there's been this long tail blurring that clean delineation. When the team rings the bell in

Television

Television with a Ready-Made Ending - Paradise Season 2

The following contains spoilers for the first two seasons of Paradise Paradise's opening is immediately good. Main character Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) finds The President of the United States (James Marsden) dead in his residence. Inherently dramatic, exciting. By the end of that episode,

TV Reviews

It's a Health Habit - The Pitt s02e14

About halfway through this episode, my partner pointed out that while Robby has been talking about leaving all day, at no point has anyone told him not to leave. While so much of the season has been about obscuring Robby's mental state, it's here, finally, that

Episode Reviews

Best We Can Do - The Pitt s02e13

When The Pitt ended last season with the Pittfest shooting, it established a precedent that would have been unwise to follow. If the show were to continue the trend of the fifteen episode season (yes please), there needed to be excuses to get the day shift to stick around after

Television

They Found More Doctor Who

On the night the BBC released their news, the only thing I could thing about was how an organization called Film Is Fabulous finding two episodes of Doctor Who. Sounds like a silly thing to get excited about, but without the proper context it's difficult to convey just

TV Reviews

This Place Is Like Quicksand - The Pitt s02e12

As the days starts to wind down and the day shift starts to prep their handoffs, The Pitt delivers an episode I can only describe as... clunky. After a season full of subtext and character arc, this is finally the point where all of these characters (worn down by an

Television

April 2026 Check-In

And a very happy anniversary to me! It's the beginning of April, which means I've been writing this culture conversation for a full year now. There's been more than 120 posts (and a couple of podcast episodes for fun), which is a lot. Looking