Chiasmus occurs in a work of art when the first half of a story mirrors the second half in minute detail. So a chiasmus begins and ends in the same way, and it reaches a crucial turning point in the middle. It can be words in scripture or events in film. And today we are going to show how Quigley Down Under is an example of Cinematic Chiasmus! Continue reading
“It’s really bad,” my wife told me after she watched The Croods: A New Age in the theater. “The jokes were all in the trailer, the characters get really creepy at certain points like when they eat, there’s an annoying message in it, and its story is way too messy compared to the first one.”
I was surprised to hear her criticisms because she really likes the first one. I’m usually slow to try something new, so even though I had heard that The Croods was a great film for years, I didn’t bother watching it until a little over a month ago. And I loved it! It was a How to Train Your Dragon-type experience for me because I had little familiarity with it beforehand, so my expectations of it being good were minimal. And it turned out to blow even high expectations out of the water. I was shocked at how they managed to combine The Flintstones and The Land Before Time into an undeniably satisfying viewing experience.
I didn’t know what they were going to do in the sequel, and I deliberately avoided watching any trailers for it. All I had to go on was what my wife said. A few weeks after she saw it, we checked it out from the library to watch it with all of our kids, and I was expecting to hate it. To my amazement, The Croods: A New Age managed to match the quality of the first film, if not surpass it in some ways. I extolled its positive qualities to my wife until she actually came to like it, too. It must have looked a lot creepier on a big screen.
I’d like to share five main reasons why The Croods: A New Age managed to win me over in spite of my prejudice against it at the start. Continue reading
Last Monday, I logged into Reddit looking for fun things to upvote when I was hit by an admin message informing me that my account has been permanently suspended. No recourse. No discussion. No mercy. And why was I banned? Because I had upvoted something that was deemed to be in violation of the site’s terms and conditions.
I didn’t post anything obscene or say anything against the rules. I simply pushed a button that could mean I was in full agreement with the statement or that I thought it was funny or that I was just trying to be nice by liking as many things as I could. There are any number of reasons for an upvote on Reddit. But apparently there’s only one reason that counts: malicious intent. Continue reading
For an entire decade, every year that a Star Trek sequel debuted in theaters, James Cameron also released a film of his own. From 1984 to 1994. That coincidence might seem to warrant a reaction like “So what?” if it weren’t for the additional observation that they do an uncannily good job predicting the next film each other would release. For example, Cameron’s 1984 film predicts what the 1986 Star Trek film would be about, just as the 1984 Star Trek film predicts what Cameron’s 1986 film would be about. And it keeps going: 1986 leads to 1989, which leads to 1991, which leads to 1994, which leads to one more film each.
Join me as we go through a dozen films by some amazing filmmakers, and the surprising similarities they share. Continue reading
I started feeling an irresistible urge not long ago to write about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but I didn’t know why at first. I started obediently writing whatever thoughts came into my head, and I found that I was gleaning important messages from it that I think we could all benefit from. I’m seeing a similar story play out in more and more films lately, thanks to these feelings I keep receiving and my willingness to follow them wherever they lead. So let’s see where this one takes us as we liken the test in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to our own lives. Continue reading
Yes, I meant to put that “a” in the title of this article. That’s because I’m not just asking if we are good people individually, but, as a neighborhood, city, county, state, and country, are we a good people? Do we deserve God’s mercy or justice? Do we even care about these questions? Continue reading
My favorite moment in the film Speed is one that I don’t think would stand out to most people. But when you notice it, you might just realize how powerful it is. It’s not the scene where Jack Traven chases down a bus rigged to explode if it goes below 50 miles per hour. Nor is it when he’s barreling down the streets of Los Angeles, when he tries to defuse the bomb underneath the bus, or even when he has to jump the bus across a gap in the freeway. It actually comes right before the famous bus-jump scene, and it’s a quiet moment, not a long, complicated action sequence. Continue reading
I had fun spotlighting some of the absurdities of modern life against the backdrop of Young Frankenstein. And I’m happy to say that that’s not the only film that has some cathartically funny lessons we can learn to help us deal with a pandemic. We’ll enter the realm of macabre humor as we talk about The Silence of the Lambs as though it took place during the current pandemic, exploring four examples of social distancing found in it. Continue reading
I went a little overboard with my verbosity in the last few weeks, so I will be brief this time to balance it out a bit. There are many people I admire and respect, and Bill Whittle is one of them. He is a YouTuber who is able to consistently convey profound messages of hope in a way I can only dream of doing. And what’s more, he offers concrete actions we can take to turn hope into a reality. Continue reading
I’d like to draw some interesting comparisons to Escape to Witch Mountain. I only recall watching it once as a child, but just about everything about it was burned into my memory so vividly that I always considered it a personal favorite, even though I didn’t feel the need to rewatch it as an adult until recently. When I did, I was flooded with childhood memories. The bully. The feeling of homesickness and abandonment (even though that was just a fear of mine, never a reality). The inability to express one’s thoughts and feelings verbally. The longing for something indescribable. It’s all there.
I don’t mean to say that Escape to Witch Mountain is perfect, but it is a wonderful exploration of childhood fears and yearnings. It’s about a couple of orphans who want to find a place where they belong. I will liken it to things of a spiritual nature as a way to illustrate them in an artful manner. Continue reading
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