*Potential spoilers for Frozen, Don Jon, The Great Gatsby, Her, Before Midnight* 2013 was definitely a big year for movies (mediocre blockbuster season aside) with some great releases coming in nearly every genre. There were a number of trends and themes that were prevalent last year, but the tone of many of last year’s biggest…
Category: Think Piece Locker
Don Jon: A World Addicted To Expectations
Last weekend Joseph Gordon Levitt’s first major pet project Don Jon hit theaters to a warm box office welcome and some really exciting critical acclaim. It’s one that I’ve been hotly anticipating ever since it premiered at Sundance last January. Instead of doing a standard review for this movie, I thought I’d do some analysis….
Spring Breakers: Teen Trash or Twisted Morality Tale?
Last weekend I went to the theater to check out the critically acclaimed, semi-controversial, and seemingly provocative Spring Breakers to see what the fuss was about. For those of you who aren’t familiar; Spring Breakers is the movie that is taking former Disney child stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens and taking their career in a more deviant direction. After…
Redefining the Genre of High Fantasy: A Song of Ice and Fire
“Life is not a song, sweetling. Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow.” -The Hound Fantasy is a genre that has given people a form of hope an escape for over a century with works such as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wheel of Time, and The Earthsea Cycle creating expansive worlds full of…
Ethan Frome: Man of Darkness
Ethan Frome is a film that looks at the sadness, oppression, and hopelessness that can fill a man’s heart when he realizes that his life is not where he wants it to be. The film is a very dark and moody film that has very little happiness or hope to show to audiences, but still…
Tall Tales of Big Fish: The Legacy of Storytelling
Big Fish is a film that captures the excitement, magic, love, pain, and creativity of storytelling by showing the audience a story of a son who does not understand his father’s obsession and love of telling tall tales instead of telling things straight. The film is a tale of growing up, facing the realities of…
Blade Runner: A Dark Future?
Blade Runner is widely considered one of the greatest science fiction films of all time and it is so because of its multilayered story filled with different messages and ideologies. The movie covers quite a few different territories ranging from themes of post-modern capitalism to anti-consumerism to themes of what it means to be human….
The Colors and Symbols of Vertigo
“Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere. “ -Madeline Alfred Hitchcock is regarded by many film critics and audiences as one of the greatest if not the greatest film director of all time. No matter how you may feel about his movies it would be very difficult to argue against Hitchcock’s…
Revising a Masterpiece: George Lucas and Star Wars
Star Wars has by this point become a worldwide phenomenon at least 3 times in the last 35 years. It has left its mark on classic cinema, modern cinema, and more recently TV with The Clone Wars. The series has constantly pushed special effects and new technology that has in turn given millions and potentially billions of…
Revisiting Citizen Kane
“You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.” -Charles Foster Kane Citizen Kane is widely considered one of the greatest if not the greatest film ever made. The first time I had ever seen this movie was about four years ago when I was entering…
Caleb Masters 