The Great Movie Conquest of 2022: March

For this month's installment, I reached out to something like ten or so roommates I lived with over the course of three or four years. You can thank them for finally making me watch Baby Driver.

Despite everyone in my TMA 391 class abounding in love over Baby Driver, I wasn't expecting it to do much for me. Heist movies aren't really my niche, and I don't love Ansel Elgort. The sum total of my knowledge of the film pre-viewing was Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James (?), driving, and a "really dope soundtrack." I guess the blank slate gave the film a lot of room to grow because I really enjoyed the film. I just want to know where they got the idea for "Baby" as a character. So much to unpack there.

Initially, I thought that About Time trapped itself in a premise with no tension since the entire film is about a guy who can press rewind on any given episode of his life, but I was grateful the story found a way to give his actions some weight, and it ended up taking me to a very profound place.

Knowing what I do about Werner Herzog, it's no surprise to me that he would be so fascinated by someone like Timothy Treadwell and make him the subject of one of his projects. I had a complex reaction to Grizzly Man that I've tried articulating a good half dozen times in this piece, to no success. I'll have to give it a try some other time.

Of the two reviews that I put out this month, only one of them was a theater experience, and I resent that very much. Turning Red was such a welcome addition to the Pixar canon, I've already gone back to give it a second viewing. The Lost City, meanwhile, was nothing to journal about, but I guess it filled a need.

I actually ended up seeing most of the nominees for this year's Oscars. (I've still only seen like two of the BP nominees from last year, and I only caught those in the last few months.) The two that I hit this month were Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley and Sian Heder's CODA. The former I thought was well-made, but not particularly to my taste, even with Bradley Cooper. I mostly like Del Toro when he's making monsters --like actual monsters, not just metaphorical ones.

CODA, meanwhile, was arguably the best item I've hit while doing this challenge. The film punched some really strong emotions without going for easy hits. I wasn't even counting on it taking home the big trophy on Sunday, but I was not complaining. I'm really excited to see what all the attention this movie is receiving will do for Apple TV+ as a service.

As I was reaching out to my old roommates for suggestions, they would sometimes preface their lists with, "I don't really know movies," or "you're the film guy, don't know what I can offer here." This was, of course, a non-issue. They had a plentitude of good suggestions.

But it did get me thinking about why we give more intellectual weight to certain kinds of films--why we might think that our favorite films don't "have a lot to offer." In my experience, when someone expresses this opinion, or one like it, they're usually admitting that they feel insecure about their tastes being too mainstream.

Without getting into an essay's worth of pontificating on the arbitrary divide between "high art" and popular entertainment, it's worth acknowledging here that intelligent discussion isn't limited to films in the criterion collection. The alchemy between the language of film and the complexity of the human heart is available across any range of film. Even a "brainless action pic" like the Clash of the Titans remake can elicit a complex response from me that will gestate over the span of several years. I always advocate for seeking out films that aren't in your comfort zone, but that's not as straightforward as devaluing superhero movies.

Looking forward, the votes are in for April, and I will be focusing on films from Japan for the upcoming month. (Will this be the day I finally see Seven Samurai?) Thanks to everyone who shared their voice.

Then in May I will be anchoring my viewing on a specific actor. I've narrowed the options down to the two handsomest devils in old Hollywood, James Stewart and Cary Grant. You can cast your votes here.

This is all just one really long way to say ... we are one quarter of the way through the year. Congrats.

--The Professor

Time to Move Ooooooon to April

March's Harvest:

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

Guest in the House (1944)

About Time (2013)

Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)

Hell's Kitchen (1939)

Sunday in the Park with George (1986)

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies (2014)

Diner (1982)

Brute Force (1947)

The Green Mile (1999)

Turning Red (2022)

Baby Driver (2017)

Moby Dick (1956)

Empire of the Sun (1987)

Monos (2019)

Vertical Limit (2000)

The More the Merrier (1943)

My Führer (2007)

CODA (2021)

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Grizzly Man (2005)

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

The Lost City (2022)

Man of La Mancha (1972)

Peter Pan (1924)

Free Guy (2021)

Chronicle (2012)

Shane (1953)

Comments

Elemental: Savoring Pixar's Fading Light

I’ve only been doing this writing thing for a short while. But in that space, I have been surprised at many of the developments I’ve gotten to witness unfolding in the popular film landscape. It was only five years ago, for example, that superhero movies were still thought to be unstoppable. Here in 2025, though, we know better. But the wheels coming off the Marvel machine accompanied a shift in their whole method of production and distribution, and it didn’t take long for the natural consequences to catch up with them as verifiable issues started appearing in their films. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) No. The development that has most surprised me has been critics and their slow-motion break-up with Pixar. The only way I know how to describe what I’ve seen over the last five years … imagine that your roommate has been stuck for a long time dating a girl who was obviously bad for him, and after he finally breaks up with her he gets back into the dating ring. All the girls he takes out ...

PROFESSOR'S PICKS: Five Lessons Hollywood Ought to Learn from the Success of WICKED

That which has teased studios since the freak success of La La Land and The Greatest Showman has finally come to pass: Hollywood has finally launched a successful musical. Or rather, they've launched two. The musical is sort of like the golden idol at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark . It's valuable beyond imagination--but only if you know just how to retrieve it. There have been specific periods where the musical has yielded tremendous rewards for Hollywood, but for the greater part of the lifespan of feature-filmmaking, studios have been punished for reaching beyond their means. Yet after ages of dormancy, t he years leading up to the Wicked movies were lined with musicals, more than we'd seen in the previous decade. A few of them were quite well crafted. Others were ... learning experiences. None really became what we'd call "mainstream." But Wicked and Wicked: For Good have both seen rare success. I'm publishing ...

REVIEW: AVATAR - Fire and Ash

The "Avatar" chapters have generally renewed their interest to the masses based on which exciting new locale and each new culture whichever film opts to explore. Following that dance, "Fire and Ash" introduces yet another Na'Vi clan, this one hailing from the scorched plains under the shadow of an erupted volcano. But their biome is decidedly less spectacular than the lush jungles of the Omaticaya or the rich coral reefs where the Metkayina dive. Between the ashen grounds of the volcano clan and the metallic fortress of the humans, this is comfortably the most monochromatic of the three Avatar films. And yet, Avatar: Fire and Ash is no less gripping for it. And this is where the internet really starts to reckon with what us fans of the franchise have always kind of known: that the many screensavers offered by the Avatar world ... they have been nice . But these films would have never made the impact they have if the...

The Great Movie Conquest of 2022 - Febuary

Welcome back, one and all, to my latest attempt to justify being enslaved to a million different streaming services. My efforts to watch one new movie a day all year haven't worn me out yet, but we're not even past the first quarter yet. My first film of the month brought me to Baz Lurhmann's Australia , and it reminded me what a beautifully mysterious animal the feature film is. My writer's brain identified a small handful of technical issues with the film's plotting, but the emotional current of the film took me to a place that was epic, even spiritual. I don't know. When a film cuts straight to the core of your psyche, do setup and payoff even matter anymore? I think this film is fated for repeated viewings over the years as I untangle my response to this film. One of my favorite films of all time is Billy Wilder's The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. You'd think, then, that learning that the t...

Year in Review: 2025

So, I guess I’ll start out by saying that … I wasn’t kidding last year when I said I was gonna do better with reviews, folks. This is the first time in three years that my review count landed in the double digits, and I reached that benchmark barely past the year’s halfway point. My total this year landed at 19. This breaks my previous record of 17 from 2021 and also outpaces the total haul from 2024 and 2023 combined. Once again, " WICKED " pulled through as the biggest contributor this year, and I wouldn't have had that any other way. These last two years of active anticipation have been some of the most gratifying I've ever had as a person who feels investment in moving pictures. I'm even more excited, though, for this duology to be folded into film history: that thing I really love writing about. I will always regret not reviewing The Holdovers (2023) In the past, I have let myself get away with checki...

Children of a Lesser God: Between Sound and Silence

So ... you all remember how I was really annoyed by The Power of the Dog ? I am more than perfectly fine that the award went to the much better CODA . I thought it was much more enjoyable as a piece of film, and unlike The Power of the Dog , it did showed honest interest in the community it was reporting to champion. In the case of CODA , that was, of course, the deaf community. But it's actually not CODA I want to talk about in detail at this time. That movie's milestones exist along a timeline that extends ... further back than I can track today, but at least as far back as March 30, 1987, when Marlee Matlin became the first deaf actor to receive an Academy Award for her performance in Children of a Lesser God . Randa Haines’ 1986 film centers on the romance between a hearing man and a deaf woman and the challenges they face. This was a major shift in how the deaf community was represented onscreen. Paul Attanasio wrote in ...

Saying Goodbye to Stranger Things

There's a quote from critic Mark Caro that I think about a lot. I shared it back when I did my critical survey of Pixar movies . Writing about Finding Nemo , Caro wrote in the Chicago Tribune in 2003 , "Classic film eras tend to get recognized in retrospect while we take for granted timeless works passing before our eyes. So let's pause to appreciate what's been going on at Pixar Animation Studios." I think that captures the aspirations of all active-minded media consumers. Or at least, it ought to. "This good thing won't last forever, so savor it while it before the sun goes down." Modern Times (1936) But this is also a very hard mindset to access in an online culture that is always seeking to stamp labels and scores on a thing before we shove it on the conveyor belt and move on to the next parcel. It's something I have been thinking about for the last year or so as the completion of the ...

Do You Hear the People Sing?: "Les Miserables" and the Untrained Singer

Perhaps no film genre is as neglected in the 21 st century as the musical. With rare exception, the o nly offerings we get are the occasional Disney film, the occasional remake of a Disney film, and adaptations of Broadway stage shows. When we are graced with a proper musical film, the demand is high among musical fans for optimum musical performance, and when a musical film doesn’t deliver this, these fans are unforgiving. From the moment talking was introduced in cinema, the musical film has been a gathering place where vocal demigods assemble in kaleidoscopic dance numbers in a whirl of cinematic ecstasy too fantastical for this world. What motivation, then, could Tom Hooper possibly have for tethering this landmark of modern musical fandom in grounded, dirty reality? This movie’s claim to fame is the use of completely live-singing, detailed in this featurette, something no previous movie musical had attempted to...

The Notebook Has No Excuses

The thing about film is … the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. Film tells us, even in a society obsessed with wealth and gain, “Remember, George, no man is a failure who has friends.” Film warns us that the most unnatural evil lies in wait at the Overlook Hotel and peeks out when all the guests leave for the winter–and that the heart of it resides in room 237–knowing we'll trip over ourselves wanting to open that door. Film is what makes us believe that the vessel for the deepest human emotion could be contained in a cartoon clownfish taking his unhatched cartoon son and holding him in his cartoon fin and telling him he will never let anything happen to him. Nights of Cabiria (1957) Even when it tries to plant its feet aggressively in realism, film winds up being an inherently emotional realm. We feel safer to view and express all manners of passions or desires here in the space where the rules of propriety just don’t matter anymore. So a fa...

Pan's Labyrinth: The Fantasy and Reality of Good and Evil

So here’s a question I’m sure no one’s asked yet: what is the point of fantasy? Ask your resident D&D enthusiast or aspiring fantasy writer what it is about the fantasy genre that excites them so much, and you’re bound to get a variety of answers, but the topic of escapism tends to be a common thread. Sometimes the trash compactor of the real world just stinks so much, and you just need to vacation in someone else’s world. You can only stew in real world politics for so long before you just have to unwind by tracing the Jedi lineage or memorizing the rules of alomancy. This is where you commonly run into thoughts that fantasy nerds are just incompatible with reality and are deliberately shirking any responsibility from participating in it. This mindset has a lot in common with the nostalgia stigma we discussed with “Roger Rabbit” and “Detective Pikachu.” It is also a very elitist perspective born out of the same attitude...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog