The gap between the general consensus of the Prequel Trilogy and my own opinion of George Lucas's sophomore slump is widening by the day, and I think I know why. Growing up as a massive Star Wars fan, I only ever watched movies and shows that were a part of it, and never exposed myself to the wider world of cinema. I have a theory that when someone says Attack of the Clones is a good movie, they are mostly comparing it to other Star Wars movies. As for me, I'm setting it up a

Some things never change, and twenty-seven years of merely existing doesn't make a bad movie good. Between their cute but misguided love for the prequel trilogy and their rabid hatred for the intoxicatingly confident The Last Jedi, I'm beginning to think that the Star Wars fanbase and I have different priorities. Rarely is this seen more clearly than in The Phantom Menace, two hours of a breathless and underwhelming sprint to a hollow conclusion that is largely irrelevant to

Prisoners is a guilty pleasure of mine. Its shortcomings are as obvious as its color palette is grim, and its messaging is as subtle as a hammer blow to the head. It is an oppressively dark police procedural, a maze of ruin and decay populated by villains with horrible motives and so-called heroes with horrifying methods. It gives us a safe and controlled environment to experience the horrible, thrilling rush of having someone we love taken from us to God knows where by God k

M. Night Shyamalan's movies all operate in the same way, as thrillers with familiar-enough trimmings that get injected with one absolutely unique element. Take the relatively more recent Trap, for instance, a fugitive-hunting movie where the main protagonist is the fugitive. Split draws within the same lines as a kidnapping movie with an absolutely unique kidnapper. It's also one of Shyamalan's better movies, mainly thanks to James McAvoy's powerhouse performance as a trouble

Every genre has conventions, and one of the things that interests me the most about Jordan Peele's Get Out is how even its most basic elements subvert them. We naturally associate a subset of visual tropes with horror movies, namely cobwebs, haunted houses, and masked killers, but this one eschews those cliches. It is a maze of upscale suburban neighborhoods and sub-mansions, cast in an unsettlingly upright light. Some horror movies deliberately evoke the past. This one lives

I wanted some fresh air today. As I write this, I'm sitting on my front porch, a gentle breeze flowing over my body and raising goosebumps on my legs. At the same time, violent winds blow the Amblin Entertainment logo credit into thousands of jagged pieces on my computer screen. I've always been amazed by the weather, especially by how it can be so calm one moment and so savage the next, and though I've never seen a tornado, I've harbored a keen and persistent interest in the

Director Michael Hazanavicius accomplishes something with The Artist that a movie with sound in it cannot, not because there is some secret sauce to silent cinema that will forever keep talky cinema from outdoing it, but rather because he has a keen understanding of the ins and outs unique to silent cinema, how they work, and how to bend those tricks and tropes to his advantage. This is a delightful film, an amusing and thrillingly emotional roller coaster of a tribute to a b

Wes Craven is winking at the audience with Scream. In a lot of ways, this movie is a product of its time, as while horror classics such as Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street laid the groundwork for the genre, Scream is more interested in subverting and satirizing these rules. This is a double-edged sword, halfway-applicable pun intended. Scream is a self-aware movie, but this tongue-in-cheek mindfulness also serves as an excuse to trot out easy cliches without much thoug

We've all been there before, angrily stomping on the accelerator to get away from that driver who honked at us for a little too long and gave us the finger for one reason or another, justified or not. Unhinged is a willing caricature of these usually forgettable encounters that ropes in escalating crimes of every severity, from road rage all the way up to capital murder. What it is not is varied or nuanced enough to make these despicable crimes land with anything other than a

At its worst, V for Vendetta plays like a PSA on why your parents should be voting for one guy and not the other, as an occasionally incendiary and sometimes vague thriller that has been used as a one-size-fits-all critique of every major public office candidate of the last twenty years. Still, this movie has its moments, and at its best, it possesses all the antics and showmanship of a theater kid, and if you've spent any time around theater kids, you'll know the cliches are