To understand One Battle After Another, I want you to think about a garden. If you put time and effort into a garden, it will look nice. If you ignore the garden, then slowly and inevitably other ...

Eddington has so much going on that it’s easy to feel lost. Thankfully, our First Rule of Film Analysis holds true: if you compare the beginning to the end, narrative and thematic intention becomes ...

Ryan Coogler uses the opening shot of Sinners to establish the film’s primary theme: freedom. Modern cinema has defaulted to using the very beginning of the movie as a thesis for the story’s main ...

If you want a quick explanation of A Complete Unknown, here it is. A Complete Unknown has two levels. The first is Bob Dylan’s journey into and out of the folk scene. Initially, it’s something he ...

If you just want a quick explanation of Nosferatu, here it is. Nosferatu is about liberation from the burdens and judgments of society, especially around the idea of sex. Remember, storytelling in ...

Bishop Robert Barron had quite the response to Conclave. He said: If you are interested in a film about the Catholic Church that could have been written by the editorial board of the New York Times, ...

The end of Heretic is designed to make viewers wonder what information is relevant or irrelevant. For example, there’s a whole stretch of the film where Mr. Reed wants Barnes and Paxton to believe ...

Man, Naomi Scott gave everything she had to Smile 2 to convey Skye Riley’s grief, trauma, and struggle. One of the most memorable horror performances in recent memory. And Skye feels very much of the ...

The ending of Terrifier 3 is brutal. Like…really brutal. Seemingly, Sienna is left with nothing. So it’s easy to think of the ending as a complete downer, as a pessimistic look at how life is ...

The Silence of the Lambs is, for the most part, a pretty straightforward movie. But it does have two bits of subtext I think are pretty cool. The first has to do with time. And the second with the ...

The easiest way to understand Megalopolis’s general idea is that Cesar is a progressive, Cicero is a conservative, and Clodio is Trump. So you have the serious back and forth between two ideologically ...

What is Transformers One about? Transformers One introduces the idea of “staying on protocol” as a challenge to viewers. It’s that message that you’re more than meets the eye. You have potential. But ...