When The Shape of Water ended, I was excited for a few reasons. First, I’m a sap and the happy ending made me happy. Second, the ending was mysterious enough that I knew I’d be writing about it. Third, I recognized that…

I think one of the reasons the ending of The Lobster leaves people so bemused and unsure is because it’s a philosophical ending rather than a resolution. Movies and books have trained us to expect resolution. Ask anyone what the parts of a…

Blow-Up deals with the themes of transience and elusiveness. How do you develop such a theme in a movie? Well. You make a lot of things transient and elusive.  I recently wrote about The Lobster and how it’s a conclusion based on philosophy rather…

The Fountain makes things difficult by being three separate stories. And the lines are blurred between what is real and what isn’t real. To that end, there’s arguments to be made for a very fantastical reading of the film and then…

Most of us have heard about the writing rule of “show, don’t tell.” Usually this is about how someone writes an individual moment or scene. Telling would be, “Bobby came home angry, ignored his mother, and went right to his room.” Showing would be,…

I don’t think it will surprise anyone when I say that Donnie Darko is a weird movie.  The theatrical version can leave a viewer in complete and absolute befuddlement. Richard Kelly’s Director’s Cut wants to take it easy on the audience so…

The ending of Manchester by the Sea has a bit more depth than what it might seem. In the simplest terms, by film’s end, Lee has had a minor breakthrough with his grief and guilt. That’s it. This isn’t some Inception-like mystery where…

The opening scene of Nocturnal Animals caught me by surprise. It’s a puzzling way to start a film because there’s no context. We don’t know anything about the world. And by the time the movie ends, this first scene is a mysterious…

In the end, Nocturnal Animals barely feels like a film made by a human being. You could just dub it a “stylish exercise” and call it a day. But I just can’t shake the fact that Ford somehow wants it to be…