One of the biggest misconceptions about movie critics is that we evaluate films emotionlessly. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Movies have always been vessels for human emotion, and we, as critics of all stripes, have committed ourselves to what is fundamentally little more than the study of why movies make us feel the way they do. However, emotional connection to a movie is only one piece of a bigger puzzle, and it's no secret that, just as a pencil sketch

I remember it like it was yesterday, feeling so uncomfortably torn as my father and I silently exited the theater after watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi for the very first time. I was barely fifteen years old, and I had just watched a movie that had challenged everything I loved about a franchise I had grown up practically worshipping. My mind was racing, and my heart was pounding. I knew this movie had shredded my nerves, flipped my assumptions about Star Wars on their head

Whoever gave No Sudden Move its name has a good grasp of double entendres and a biting sense of humor. Anyone hoping for a movie featuring lots of shootouts between rival gangs in the back alleyways of 1950s Detroit will be vastly disappointed. This movie is something else entirely, a slow, familiar, and altogether labyrinthine genre drama about people involved in the mob that cares more about the personal matters of its characters than it does about what caliber of pistol th

A movie exists within the context of every similar movie that came before it. I'm still struggling with whether it's fair or not to criticize Predator: Badlands for copying both its subject matter and the weightless way it looks off the test sheet of other, earlier movies and shows like it, but it is a movie that released simultaneously in theaters and on streaming, a sign of unconfidence on the part of the filmmakers that I can't say is entirely unjustified. Not everything a

"By far the greatest danger of artificial intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it." Computer scientist Eliezer Yudkowsky's ominous quote perfectly summarizes the fears of both computer programmer Caleb and the hubris of Nathan, the tech whiz running the megacorporation Caleb and a whole lot of others just like him work for. Ex Machina is a brilliant movie about the dangers of technology, one that does a super good job of immersing you in its dar

Very few undeserved audience backlashes to any movie make me as angry as the backlash to Ad Astra . No, this movie is not an accurate representation of space travel, but not once does it claim to be, and it is entirely unfair to criticize it for ignoring something it never intended to acknowledge in the first place. And no, its advertising does not accurately represent the movie it actually is, but anyone who thinks for a moment that this is the fault of the film is kidding t

The Black Phone is a movie I still think about quite a bit, not necessarily because of its merits or deficiencies, but because I wonder whether my older, full-blown recommendation of it was warranted. Subsequent rewatches were not as kind to the movie, and I often find myself wondering whether it was really as good as I had once thought. Either way, it was well-received and successful enough for Blumhouse to greenlight a sequel, again directed by Scott Derrickson ( Sinister )

A lot can change in three-and-a-half years. I was once a college freshman, awed by the mystery surrounding a movie critic and how he or she viewed a film. I was enamored with The Dark Knight, as most young men tend to be, enamored with the emotions I felt while watching it, yet unsure exactly how to put them into words. Now that I'm somewhat more grown, the thing that shocked me the most about rewatching this movie was how tragic it actually is. I found myself glued to the sc

Growth is scary, but it's an inevitable part of being a movie critic. With that growth comes the inevitability that you will sometimes read your older reviews and take issue, if less with your initial final grade, then more with the criteria you used to get there. Hyperbole isn't an uncommon trait of movie critics when they first start writing, and my original - and I believe overly-negative - review of The Dark Knight Rises is littered with it. I just happened to be poorly m

When writing a screenplay, or any type of story for that matter, the line between over-complication and oversimplification is depressingly narrow. Lean too far in one direction, and your story ends up stuffed and unwieldy. Lean too far the other way, and you look as though you ran out of ideas halfway through writing it. But of course, guiding a movie from concept to screen and writing a book are different in as many ways as they are similar. And in the world of cinema, writi

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about Elevation is that it actually contained much of what it needed to be an excellent survivalist drama. Will isn't a terribly noteworthy main character, but Anthony Mackie plays him with utmost sincerity. The world he and other survivors like him inhabit is portrayed gracefully with a subtle, Wild West-esque flair. It seemed early on as though this movie had all the right ingredients to be genuinely and believably soulful. And so I'm a

The recipe for Steven Quale's Into the Storm (2014) is simple. First, organize a group of fairly ordinary people. Second, place them within the city limits of the quaint Silverton, Oklahoma. And lastly, throw tornadoes at them until they've learned a few pithy lessons about what it means to appreciate life. At least that's the stated recipe, because in practice, this movie is little more than an excuse to grandstand the sum of what would happen if some hyperactive children wi