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Arts and Culture Film

On Violent Imagery and Civil War

I saw Alex Garland’s Civil War with my friends because the movie seemed like an entertaining, if self-serious warning about how America could descend into a civil war. The trailer featured cool shots of the White House getting blown up, and as Vulture film critic Bilge Ebiri said in his review “Americans sure do love […]

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Arts and Culture Film

All Too Familiar Actors

When was the last time you watched a movie and said “Oh god, this guy again? Is there anything he isn’t in?” It feels like that happens to me more and more these days. I am constantly thinking about why certain actors are reused again and again and some are fantastic in one film and […]

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Arts and Culture Film

Dune Part Two: A Generational Tour de Force

I have always had an utmost appreciation for films that facilitate meaningful conversations after viewing. Nearly all of my favorite films hold this trait. I love showing someone a film that I feel strongly about and afterward having that “what did YOU think” conversation. From what I’ve heard, Frank Herbert’s Dune is one of those […]

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Arts and Culture Column Film

Why Are Studios Deleting Finished Movies?

Let’s talk about the atrocious phenomenon in Hollywood where a studio will fund a movie, write, direct, and edit it, and then delete the entire thing, erasing all of the work put into the project and spitting in the faces of those who contributed.  I hate this. Why do they do this? Well, it’s movie […]

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Arts and Culture Film

Actors and AI: What the end of the SAG-AFTRA Strike Means for the Television and Film Industry

At long last, the 118 day actor’s strike has ended, following the end of the WGA writer’s strike which ended in late September. For those of you who don’t know the motivation behind the two strikes- as always, they lie in pay and benefits, and now concerns over streaming and artificial intelligence.  Streaming essentially took […]

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Arts and Culture Film

Killers of the Flower Moon Review: A Masterfully Told Tragedy

I was rather shocked to learn that 80 year old director Martin Scorsese had another movie set to release so soon after 2020’s “The Irishman.” “Irishman” was a movie filled with themes of what it’s like to see the world change around you as you grow old. Seemingly the perfect film for a director with […]

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Film

Emma Seligman’s Bottoms

With 2023 coming to an end, it’s easy to assume that a lot of the year’s heavy-hitter film releases have already come and left theaters. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth thanks to the release of Emma Seligman’s sophomore dark comedy, Bottoms. The film follows highschool students PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo […]

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Arts and Culture Film

The Movie Industry’s Franchise Obsession

Jurassic Park, Terminator, Mission Impossible, James Bond, Fast and Furious, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, The MCU, The DCU, Transformers, Lord of the Rings, the number of major movie franchises seems to grow larger and larger with each passing year. Stale ideas being remixed and recast until the final product has only a small […]

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Arts and Culture Film

What Kind of Man is Indiana Jones? 

There’s a point in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Rene Belloq, the film’s villain, claims that he and Indiana Jones are distorted mirror images of each other, that all it would take would be one bad day to turn the film’s morally-ambiguous hero into a villain. This scene, to a certain extent, is the […]

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Arts and Culture Film

Cocaine Bear: Absurdly Underwhelming

Spoiler Warning! Cocaine Bear is a movie that demands not to be taken seriously. The idea of a drug fueled bear berserking its way through Georgia while doing line after line of cocaine clearly has no basis on reality… right? Well, yes and no. The 175 pound bear this movie is based on did ingest […]