Y'all ever rewatch a movie and suddenly have an insight into what it means? Last night I'm watching Iron Man (2008) for maybe the twelfth time. Never watched it that closely. My surface level take is simple: a funny drunk rich dude realized war ain't good, so he makes a suit of armor to become a hero. I was wrong. Tony Stark is a sad rich dude who felt weak once so he takes it out on the world only becoming a hero when he dies.
My dad asked me one time, I was maybe ten or so, why I never ran away? Odd question that time and now I guess. I had no real answer for him. I was young and had nowhere to go.
I stood atop my house and wondered what other lands there were to conquer. My house was five levels, three above ground and two below. The top level was all glass made for observing the blocky terrain twenty plus blocks below. The next level was a bedroom and hangout pad. The bottom level was full of chests that held materials for crafting. The next two levels underground held my crafting bench, more chests, and weapons. Below that was a MINE and that was why I CRAFTED.
The old guard returns for some reason in this action flick that asks the question: who gives a shit. At the end of this film I made my girlfriend laugh by filling the room with "boos" that can only be brought forth from the saddest of sequel teases. This one made me angry.
The first family trip I remember, we all stuffed ourselves into a 1970s panel van and headed to DisneyWorld. My dad drove the van and coordinated with my uncle over CB radio cause my uncle got lost a lot while at the same time loved pretending to be a trucker.
In 1995 when I was about fourteen years old, April Showers was found dead in the primary school playground.She had been stripped naked and shot execution style in the back of the head. Dennis Mitchell, a second grade student, went to sharpen his pencil and looked out the window and saw the nude dead woman. He's fine.
I'm not gonna say "immigrant" a lot here, but this is totally a movie about how immigrants are the lifeblood of the United States no matter what social media tells you. That's the text.
When George W Bush graduated from president school to become an artist, a lot of us in the library community joked that his official library would be full of all the Crayola doodles of Chaney and dicks. For the current administration, there's less jokes because of all the horrifying and stupid and horrifyingly stupid things the man does on a near constant basis. Thinking about that presidential library, what it will house and where it will be and what it will be a monument to, gives me a sick feeling.
Sliding down to my seat a little late for the film, I forced a mother to move away from her husband to sit by her children. She was in my seat. I was not just breaking up parental date nights at a violent action movie for the fun of it just because. This time.
The following is a transcript of a valedictorian speech given to the Banned Library School of Mad Library Science graduates of 2025 by Jessie Marlborough on May 30, 2025.
Hi everybody, including the dean, The Director, faculty, staff, and my fellow students. Thanks for coming to my graduation.
A transcript of a commencement speech given to the Banned Library School of Mad Library Science graduates of 2025 given by The Director on May 30, 2025.
Successful Marvel properties (comics, movies, toilet paper, etc) center on the characters. The plot, humor, action, all of it in the best they offer is driven by the characters and their motivations. Since Endgame, Marvel has struggled to pull together compelling characters that propel good plots. Thunderbolts gets the studio back on track, yet much of the meta-story shows they have not learned that much.
The old Universal horror movies like Wolfman and Creature from the Black Lagoon get more love as trendsetting genre films rather than as quality pictures, but Night of the Hunter homages their stark black and white images with a more horrible creature than they ever could have conceived. A beautiful film that did not get its due back in the day, Night of the Hunter is fucking awesome.
I saw this movie in the theater when it was released and remembered two things: the chain and the nudity. The rest kinda floated away on a cloud of booze and hundreds of other movies released that year, and it was not a good year for movies. What I did not remember was the musical about trauma and healing that Black Snake Moan becomes.
Having seen that life close up for half my life as well as living in the bayou of Louisiana for a time, Southern Comfort is an accurate depiction of the effectiveness of the National Guard.
Spending time with people tends to bring out all those little eccentricities, but in the case of Reflecting Skin it brings out all the dark, weird shit swirling beneath.
Romance is best left to those that go in with an open heart and an open mind. Close either one and you have a relationship, but one with no passion or no devotion. No trust in the thing you share with another. I'm rambling, but Mud's characters hold love as an absolute that can be dwindled until they realize it is something that can be grown.
A deep southern gothic musical vampire movie, Sinners is about how failure and success are thrust up on you by the simple choices you make, even one as simple as letting go or holding on to a guitar. Get a handkerchief to wipe away the sweat of the hot summer sun and turn on some blues while we talk about this titanic film.
How much do you trust your partner? Are you a spy? Do those two questions make you uncomfortable? Love and trust form the chewy center of Black Bag's hard candy shell of pop music and spy intrigue.
With a gun, it's as easy as pushing a button and seeing a man fall. What that does to someone is a whole other ball of blood, though.