$5 Bin Film School: The ‘Alien’ franchise

Hi, my name is Jake and I have a problem. I have entirely too many unwatched films just laying around my apartment. Those of you who know me well also know this problem well, and have told me many times to cull the collection down. That’s what this blog series is all about. $5 Bin […]

In ‘Revenge,’ the female body is a weapon

To own and be in total control of one’s own body has, historically and cinematically, mostly been a distinctly male privilege until recently. Filming female bodies has also been a mostly male privilege, as the number of female directors helming mainstream films comes nowhere close to the number of male directors in the field. This […]

$5 Bin Film School: Stanley Kubrick

$5 Bin Film School: All the films I should have seen, but never have

This post is the start of a new project for me. I’m trying to watch through the nearly 200 unwatched movies I have stacked around my apartment. I know, I know. I could save a ton of space by just keeping the digital download cards from those films, and physical media has been dying for […]

2016 Media Log

In an effort to see just how much film, TV and books I go through on a yearly basis, I’ve decided to keep a running tally of everything I watch and read this year. I’ll keep track of the date of what I read/watched and some brief thoughts on the book or film or TV […]

‘Aloha’ is a beautiful disaster

Against my better judgment, I ignored the terrible reviews and went to see Cameron Crowe’s latest film, “Aloha,” this weekend. I used to live in Hawai’i and wanted to see some of the scenery again. I was also intrigued that the film would show more of the military side of living on O’ahu— it’s set almost […]

Some scattered thoughts on ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’

“Exodus: Gods and Kings” isn’t the Moses movie we need, but it’s the one we deserve. Ridley Scott’s latest swords-and-sandals epic checks off all the important moments in the Moses narrative, but ultimately falls short of reaching the Promised Land it tries to take its viewers. This is because Scott can’t make up his mind […]

My Top 10 Films of 2014

This list isn’t definitive, but it’s an alphabetical ranking of my favorite films I saw this year. I haven’t seen some films that will probably be awards-show fodder, like “Wild,” “Selma,” “Unbroken,” “Foxcatcher,” “Theory of Everything,” “Imitation Game” and “American Sniper.” I probably won’t get to see those until the new year, so here’s my […]

Movie Review: ‘Fury’

As I tweeted a few days ago, I’m still not sure what to feel about “Fury,” David Ayer’s new entry into the WWII movie canon. It’s violent, but in such a way that it makes the viewer abhor that violence, much like “Wolf of Wall Street” made the audience abhor the trappings of wealth. It’s also very […]

Movie Review: ‘The Judge’

Watching “The Judge” is a bit like watching the Super Bowl when your favorite team isn’t playing- you don’t really care about the outcome, you just want to sit back and enjoy the entertainment as the two best teams in the league go head-to-head. At least, that was the feeling I got while watching Robert […]