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An old friend and colleague of mine from my days as an A.V. Club writing intern at The Onion newspaper (almost) ten years ago now recently wrote me a Facebook post with an ingenious trailer mashup idea: reconstructing the Wonder Woman into a Terrence Malick film. Rory Jobst 's note even had the mashup movie title ready to go:   So with that, I was off to the editing races. In the process of cutting the video together, I noticed some of the imagery from Patty Jenkins ' 2017 Wonder Woman film was ironically Malick-ian in its poetic and elegiac visuals. Wonder Woman may be one of this summer's biggest blockbusters, but it sure as hell can make its way into an art-house theater on the heels of my latest mashup trailer! And this is not the first time I've re-imagined Wonder Woman in the vision of a legendary film auteur. Three years ago, I created Wonder Woman Under The Influence , which was cut to the style of the trailer of John Cassavetes ' 1974 dr...

Ray Kroc, the real life McDonald's businessman portrayed by Michael Keaton in The Founder and Daniel Plainview, the fictional oilman portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood , share a lot of the blood-thirsty conviction that can be linked to chasing the eponymous American Dream. Although The Founder itself is nowhere near as significant as Paul Thomas Anderson 's There Will Be Blood from a filmmaking stance, it does share a similar heartbeat underneath its altogether safe direction by John Lee Hancock ; as film critic and author Matt Zoller Seitz pointed out in his review of The Founder over at Roger Ebert : "This film could have been titled “ There Will Be Beef .”"

Jonathan Demme , the marvelous director of films like Philadelphia , Rachel Getting Married , Something Wild and The Silence of the Lambs, passed away this past Wednesday April 26, 2017. An enduring quality of his films was his ability to skillfully break the fourth wall with his subjective camera (and frequent collaborator and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto) in such a way that felt natural and non-distracting. It was also effective in tapping into the emotions and psyches of the viewers; in the pop culture, for example, most moviegoers can only picture Hannibal Lecter intensely staring through the screen, as if his eyes were set to literally come out of the canvas. Essentially, there is a sense of urgency to these artistic choices that Demme has made with these point-of-view shots. They give his films an extra layer of life and vitality. Most importantly, these shots help create an all-around empathy for the players on screen. When we see them, they see us. There's magic ...

While many were quick to dismiss 2016 as an altogether terrible year--largely due to the year rounding out with TV celeb Donald Trump as the President Elect--it wasn't a throwaway year for the movies. During a time of national unrest and uncertainty, the narratives that graced the silver screen beamed with characters, ideas and themes of unfettered hope...for better or for worse. Whether it was the harsh lesson of growing up and having your heart broken ( Café Society ) or choosing to live a lie in exchange for short-term happiness ( The Light Between Oceans ), the individuals we followed in the cinema were the silver screen embodiment of our unabashed urges to make that jump, to take a leap of faith and step away from our secure existence and reach out to the unknown. The most striking image of the year came in Denis Villeneuve's Arrival , when linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) approached a white void in the form of an alien wall inside of a UFO vessel -- an almost perf...

Fidel Castro passed away over Thanksgiving break. Castro, without question one of the towering figures of the 20th century, was a politician, a revolutionary, a prime minister and the president of Cuba. His story, his influence, his polarizing presence and his impact on history is--as the kids would say--"epic." And yet, when I finally learned of his passing over this past weekend, an unnerving realization hit me: American mainstream media didn't really do him justice. Normally, when such an impressive person from the political or pop culture stratosphere passes away, I tend to seek out richer writings on the person and in most cases, a thorough film or biopic exploring his or her legacy. Strangely, in Castro's case, outside of some documentaries, the American cinema never bothered making a film solely about Castro; his most memorable silver screen portrayals were in the really awful Che! from 1969 and in the exceptional and stirring Che from 2008. But look at ...

In my latest visual essay, concerning Superman II and Man of Steel , I decided to incorporate the text portion into the video itself, to create an assault of sensory processing, between dissolving sentences and foiled panels of the moving image. My hope is that it creates a dynamic reading and viewing experience. Please watch the video below and then refer to some supplemental photo examples. Superman II : Our hero separates the destruction from the innocent bystanders Man of Steel : Our hero destroys Metropolis, killing innocent bystanders   9/11 destruction Man of Steel destruction