Films and Feelings

The veneration of children as a reservoir of evergreen purity is a thread that informs much of modern storytelling, both in the entertainment arena as well as the political one. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)      The media likes to cast children as vessels of uncompromised goodness that adults could only ever hope to emulate. This is interesting since most theories on children’s moral development actually posit that humans don’t internalize principles until they are in adulthood, if ever. Lawrence Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development traced out childhood as a time where individuals judge morality largely on reward vs punishment. Still, their purity forms the bedrock of the conversation. Because the future hinges upon their innocence, efforts to preserve their unblemished state can go to any length. You can justify any number of actions as long as you are doing it “for the children.” The incentive to ban the teaching of critical race theory and the histor...

    For those of you who are keeping track, yes, I am still traumatized by last year's effort to watch a new movie every day of 2022 . Thank you for asking.     In this state of malaise where selecting one film to watch out of the thousands I have not yet seen feels like passing a kidney stone, I  am often left to determine which movies will most advance my education on film as an artform. This gets me thinking about the inherent intellectual worth of any given film.  Billy Wilder directing Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine on the set of The Apartment        This is obviously a very subjective measurement. All films bring something to the table, but I also think that newly enlisted film scholars will get a lot further a lot faster familiarizing themselves with filmmakers like John Ford or Billy Wilder than [ unspecified studio puppets ] . If you're looking to advance your film education, there are a few films worth bringi...

     Some die-hard fans of the franchise may have to correct me, but I don't remember Mario having a solid backstory. Or any backstory. I'm pretty sure he just emerged fully grown from a sewer pipe one day and started chucking turtle shells at mushrooms for fun.       I remember, for example, that Mario and Luigi are canonically brothers, yet there's little opportunity in the video games to explore anything like a relationship between them. That's domain better trod by film.       And this weekend's feature film adaptation from Illumination does succeed in carving out character, personality, and history for all the players on the board. The fact that Mario and Luigi are brothers isn't just a way to excuse their nearly identical apparel. Their relationship is the foundation for Mario's quest. Even more impressive is that the film reaches its degree of texture with its characters without cramming in exposition overload. This is one ar...