"Sorry to Bother You," "Do the Right Thing," and Modern African-American Filmmakers

One movie I told you to see this summer was Sorry to Bother You, directed by Boots Riley, a movie about a young black man strapped for cash who uses his 'white voice' at a telemarketing firm. The film is a critical darling, and anyone who has been following American film recently can't help but associate this success of a black director—who made a film about black people—with those recent past: Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, 2016), Ava DuVerney (Selma, 2014), Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, 2013), Justin Simien (Dear White People, 2014), Ryan Cooler (Fruitvale Station, 2013), F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton, 2015). Veteran black directors like John Singleton and Spike Lee—who I will get to later—are outliers. In truth, the motherlode of African-American filmmaking is being mined right now.

Those examples I gave are not only created by black people, they are focused on black issues. Moonlight focuses on the trials of a young black gay man in the South, Selma on the 1965 civil rights marches, 12 Years a Slave on a man kidnapped into slavery, Dear White People on racial tensions at an Ivy League school, Fruitvale Station on a police shooting of a young black man, with Straight Outta Compton following the gangsta rap group N.W.A. (an abbreviation for Niggaz Wit Attitudes). These successes are not cherry-picked. Less successful movies, like Nate Parker's Birth of a Nation and Nick Cannon's King of the Dancehall, are also being produced.

The most recent example of what I might crudely call this 'black new wave' is Sorry to Bother You, which I wrote about recently. It has prompted many to call it 2018's Get Out, perhaps the most successful film of this new wave. Like Get Out, Sorry to Bother You starts out mildly, following a down-on-his luck telemarketer whose luck changes when he gets a tip: "use your 'white voice'." The film then spirals into the surreal, peeling back the socially conscious layers of Boots Riley's smart script. He denudes the fundamental malevolence of racism as sharply as Get Out did.

Film is like all other arts in that its current state and the style of current works can always be traced back from the lineage of the art form. Movements such as this do not arise out of nowhere. I would suggest that the most recognizable origin of this 'black new wave' is Spike Lee's 1989 movie Do the Right Thing. It is a 'plotless' movie, meaning it spends more of its time developing a mood than a plot. Spike Lee plays the main character Mookie, among an array of neighborhood characters who shape the vibe of the film. He plays a pizza deliverer at an Italian-owned pizza place in a predominantly black neighborhood in Brooklyn. As a director, he shines. His movie is bold and loud and bursting with energy. It is hilarious, too, and necessarily so given the high racial tensions throughout. The movie is best in dialogues where characters jab or spar at each other, where New York City's cultures clash, and where Lee pokes at New York's social fabric through comedy.

The heat of New York's summer is a character in itself in the movie. Fans are on high, everyone covered in a thin film of sweat reminds us of it, and newspaper headlines are written about it. That heat is nothing compared to the simmering racial tensions in Brooklyn. The Italians have problems with the Blacks who have problems with the Koreans who have problems with the Jews. Tension between all of these groups and the police is palpable, as well. At one point the neighborhood kids, all black, are playing with an open fire hydrant. As a joke they spray water on a white man, who angrily pleads with the police. They ask the black neighborhood drunk what happened, replying with a rhyme equivalent to, “I don’t talk to the police.” Such an attitude seems earned given the riotous, chaotic, and heartbreaking climax of the movie, eerily foreboding the race riots in Los Angeles that would come three years later. 

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Spoilers for Do The Right Thing ahead. The most memorable scene of the movie, for me, was Radio Raheem's speech about love and hate. That's what's shown above. (Raheem also always has his boombox, playing loud.) Raheem just bought new brass knuckles; the one on the right says "love," and the one on the left says "hate." Lee places Raheem front and center in frame, shifting away from the more naturalistic style of the rest of the movie, telling his audience that this scene is crucial. Raheem tells Mookie, "The story of life is this, static. One hand is always fighting the other." Immediately after his speech Raheem walks to the pizzeria and orders pizza, but the pizza owner tells Raheem to turn the music down. This is Raheem's entire identity being confronted, and the owner points out specifically that he is playing rap music in an Italian place. Tensions rise so high that a brawl seemed brewing.

This is the dichotomy of Do the Right Thing: black and white, love and hate... How can we all blend together in harmony if the relationship between love and hate is an endless fistfight? Later in the film Raheem is murdered by police officers, motivated by hate, inciting the neighborhood, motivated by hate, to destroy the pizzeria. Hate is an easier option sometimes, especially for those oppressed, but love must shine through. This 'black new wave' has our attention, and as it continues to raise social issues I hope it, like Spike Lee, reminds us that love is part of the answer. 

The Halcyon Days of Summer, in a Movie!

I'm here to happily remind you that this movie exists. It is Moonrise Kingdom, a touching coming-of-age summer classic with a charmingly quaint style and color palette. Wes Anderson, the director, pays close attention to objects and often forces them to the forefront of the screen. There are red lighthouses, grey shaly shores, green flags, and blue tape players. These colors are relaxing and comforting, as if you grew up with these objects your whole life. Here's a collage I made of shots from Moonrise Kingdom, all close-ups of different objects.

As you can see, Anderson is also a fan of L E T T E R S and features them prominently as well. This, to me, signifies how important personal relationships are to Anderson's films. It also frames Anderson as a sympathetic director; filmmakers obsessed with cold action do not waste time on close-ups of letters. This film, like his others, relishes in those moments. Moonrise Kingdom is Anderson's highly sympathetic (and colorful) take on a chaste romance born of childlike mischief set in a summer camp. His critics may maintain that he sees the world through rose-colored lenses, but isn't it a nice view?

Three Indie Movies to See This Summer

The summer film season has long since commenced, and several movies have already cemented themselves in the popular zeitgeist. Deadpool 2 dominated May while Incredibles 2 dominated June, so I thought in July I could talk about some movies that aren't sequels to superhero movies. All of these movies are either in theaters now or coming out soon.

1.   Sorry to Bother You (in theaters now!): 

This is one of the most exciting movies of the year. It is the feature film directorial debut of well-known '90s rapper Boots Riley. (Yeah, he kept the name.) His movie has received lavish praise from critics, and deservedly so. Its smarts and intrepidity surprisingly back up its near-ludicrous premise: a black man, strapped for cash, gets a job at a telemarketing firm and uses his "white voice" so people will stay on the line and... it works quite well. The film does, too. It is, and this cannot be repeated enough, hilarious. It's no made-for-TV comedy. Its vivid atmosphere and cinematography are highly individualistic, and it is that individuality that's so stirring. Playing the lead role of "Cash" is Lakeith Stanfield, who you might recognize from Sorry to Bother You's cousin Get Out. 

The films are dramatically different but share these two undeniable similarities: fervent critical adulation, especially for their originality, at a time when black directors are drastically underrepresented in the film industry; and a poised, first-rate performance by a lead actor on this kind of stage for the first time. Many forecast that after Get Out's warm embrace, culminating in an Oscar win, more films made by and about black people could be, first, produced at the very least and, second, given a fair shake by producers and critics. If its reception is any tell, Sorry to Bother You may be part of a significant shift in the demographics of American movies for years to come. The arrival of Boots Riley is, at least, resounding.

2.   Eighth Grade (July 13): 

Unlike the last movie, I have yet to see Eighth Grade from A24, a studio with some of the best output around right now. In the same way you could call Sorry to Bother You this year's Get Out—though that would be a stretch—you could also say that Eighth Grade is this year's Lady Bird. That's the comparison it's getting, at least. Both films focus on the educationally transitory periods in our lives we so often dread and crave at the same time. Lady Bird focuses on the transition between the senior year of high school and freshman year of college, while Eighth Grade focuses on the transition into high school from middle school. 

Lady Bird was a magical movie. I find the phrase "made with love" a little idealistic sometimes, but it felt true of Lady Bird. It had a delicate humanity that touched all kinds of people. It connected to the current crop of adolescents as genuinely as Frank Ocean, speaking the language of youth. After screenings, mothers responded as if they had just read a heartwarming letter from a long-lost daughter—o.k. enough about Lady Bird. Anyway, Eighth Grade has a lot to live up to. It is the directorial debut of Bo Burnam, a dynamically versatile and internet-savvy comedian. (In this way, I suppose, Eighth Grade could also be this year's Get Out.) It has received near-universal praise from audiences and critics alike, and I'm mainly excited to see how such a goofy stage performer could spin out this kind of movie.

3.   RBG (in theaters now!): 

RBG is as much a tribute to the titular Ruth Bader Ginsburg as it is a documentary about her, yet it is still objective. Merely listing her accomplishments and triumphs by rote inspires tribute because of their inherent bravery and importance. RBG was the second female Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, appointed in 1993. She approved landmark legislation and wrote inspired dissents, inspiring a generation of young women. So RBG the film need not lionize RBG the woman, a lioness already in her own right. The movie calmly paints a moving portrait of her, rarely tempted by the kind of histrionics found in recent Hollywood biopics. 

This, on the other hand, is an indie documentary, and accordingly its production value is a little low but its vision is clear. The movie does a great job in the two most important respects: it illustrates well the dramatic journey of Bader Ginsburg's life and career, and it also illustrates well RBG the person—still brimming with verve and steadfastness. She still works regularly, performing speeches across the country with the same attitude that pushed her through years of reactionary oppression. Her voice is strong in this country. She is a feminist icon, referred to in the film on multiple occasions as "a superhero." She even lifts (admittedly small) weights! And she's 85 years old, so I think you can get off your computer to run to the theater and see this. RBG isn't flashy or cinematic but it is educational, and at times so inspiring that it might even raise your personal efficacy.

Summers are notorious for their big-budget box-office smashes and this summer seems particularly deluged with them. What is lost in this monotony of superheroes and supervillains are challenging narrative perspectives, and narrative complexity in general. Rarely are audiences coming out of the theater talking about these movies in any sense beyond their glossy surfaces. They are almost always "good vs. bad" stories with little importance placed on characterization. I do not wish to demonize this kind of film because there are inventive superhero movies, but their scarcity is undeniable.

These three movies listed—three indie movies, that is—are not as simple. They strive to challenge your presumptions and shift your point of view—to that of a black man pretending to be a white man, to that of an eighth-grade girl taking life's next step, and to that of a political giant forever entrenched in virtue. To most of us it would be difficult to conjure ourselves in these characters, to really step in their shoes; but the fond empathy evident in each director's work makes that easy. 

A Few of the Best Performances of the Summer So Far

Actors are a lot like professional sports players. Everyone involved with any major sport will tell you how many other components—front office executives, coaches, trainers, development teams—are crucial for the wheels to turn. But at the end of the day, people really show up to see the stars. It's why actors, like athletes, are showered with awards and fame and giant contracts. It isn't vanity, however. Actors guide us through their director's vision and, usually, make or break a film.

Here are a few examples of actors who made their films. The summer abounds with snarky superheroes, struggling mothers, haunted miniature artists, and more! This list isn't ranked because performances as good as these cannot be compared, only personally preferred.

• Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 2

Despite the mask and all the special effects hiding Reynolds's famous face, you never lose yourself in the character. You always know that Wade Wilson, or Deadpool, is played by Ryan Reynolds. But it doesn't take you out of the story because the film is so self-referential and meta. It is, in fact, more fun to be reminded that this is his passion project and his dream that he realized through expertly planned, highly sarcastic performance art.

• Martin Freeman in Cargo

It's another zombie movie, but it explicitly tries to separate itself from other zombie flicks through an emphasis on emotional bonds. In quality, however, the movie does little to separate itself—apart from the performance of Martin Freeman. Like many others, I became a true fan of Freeman after his role on the television series Sherlock and have followed his consistent work since then. I believe this to be his best performance yet. Freeman simply connects to his audiences and does so here, protecting his family from zombies in an impossibly grounded way.

• Charlize Theron in Tully

Though Tully was marketed as a comedy, and it is very funny, there is a lot of dramatical depth to Charlize Theron's performance and character, Marlo. She is newly pregnant. She is troubled by a recent and wild past. She struggles with mental health. (The movie was nevertheless criticized for its portrayal of mental health issues.) Theron's is a heavyweight performance by one of the best actresses working today, driving one of the summer's best releases.

• Toni Collette in Hereditary

Hereditary is becoming one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. Its protagonist is unconventional. More often than not, lead characters are quite likable and relatable so as to invite empathy from the audience. This trend is so strong it seems a cliché. Hereditary's Toni Collette plays Annie, an often unlikable woman who sculpts miniature artworks. She is, from the first frame, clearly in distress, which only adds to the dread of the summer's best horror movie.

These are merely a handful of what actors are bringing to the screen. Blockbuster superhero movies and summer horror movies are long-standing traditions and both examples—Deadpool and Hereditary—are led by talented actors. Likewise, two examples of smaller passion projects by new directors—Cargo and Tully—are helmed by relatively older actors basking in a boost in popularity. All of these performances are outstanding, but if pressed I would say Toni Collette has put forth my favorite performance of the summer so far.

The Controversial Release of "L'Avventura"

I was reading the Wikipedia entry for Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960 film L'Avventura, and noticed something off. Throughout the page, there are indications of the film's seemingly unfettered success, but only a brief mention of its initial condemnation. At its international opening at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, the film was booed intensely. This is the only paragraph that mentions the incident:

Released in 1960, the film was booed by members of the audience during its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (Antonioni and Vitti fled the theater); but after a second screening it won the Jury Prize^{[16] [2][3][17]} Gene Youngblood has stated that audience members usually booed during long sequences where nothing happened to further the film's plot, but has asserted that "quite a lot is happening in these scenes."^[9] Youngblood described the trilogy of which L'Avventura is the first component as a "unified statement about the malady of the emotional life in contemporary times."^[18]

I feel this is inadequate and causes the representation of the film's reception, in the article as a whole, to be more one-note than it was in reality. I have added information and added some of the original writing to fully explain, so here is the section I would replace it with.

Despite the film's eventual lionization by film scholars, the film received a harsh reception at its opening at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It is one of the festival's most notorious reactions. According to Vitti, "the screening of Cannes was a real-life drama." From the opening titles, despite the film's serious tone, laughs erupted in a dark theater packed with critics and photographers. Laughs continued through the runtime, joined by boos. Gene Youngblood has stated that audience members usually booed during long sequences where nothing happened to further the film's plot, but has asserted that "quite a lot is happening in these scenes."^[9] Antonioni and Vitti, who claimed she was sobbing, fled the theater. 

The next day, however, the filmmakers were sent a list of signatures from established filmmakers and writers who declared that L'Avventura was the best movie screened at Cannes. After a second screening, the film went on to win the Jury Prize^[16] at the same festival, and went on to international box office success and what has since been described as "hysteria." Youngblood described the trilogy of which L'Avventura is the first component as a "unified statement about the malady of the emotional life in contemporary times."^[17]

Expanding this story emphasizes one of the most controversial events at the world's most famous film festival. The initial reception of the film is as telling as its current prestige, though initially the article gave it little regard. L'Avventura is a bold and daring film that, according to film scholars, changed the landscape and techniques of filmmaking as much as any film that had come before it. Antonioni was a devotee of cinema's history, but never an acolyte. He is a true auteur and an iconoclast, accordingly with his fair share of detractors who may call him cold, boring, posturing, once intellectually chic and now passé.

This is a minor division of people, but it does exist, and the Cannes incident contextualizes that. The incident also calls into question the nature of public, and private, reception of art in general. Are the first audiences, swift to myopic and reactive opinions, your best source of information? Is your first viewing of a movie especially reliable, given how quickly the opinion of L'Avventura changed?

Think about these things as summer film festivals are rounding out and the tsunami of public opinion rushes through the internet.

In-Depth Review of "Amadeus" (1984)

Disclaimer: this review is written for people who have seen the movie. There are spoilers. For reviews like these I like to go into a little more depth and detail and also explore possible interpretations of the film.

I decided to revisit another favorite of mine, Miloš Forman's classic Amadeus, a film released in the late summer of 1984. I wanted to review this film to give a concrete example of the "the steady stream of work from more 'serious' directors unconcerned with box-office statistics [during the summer]," as I wrote on my first post.

The director's cut, the version I watched, is about three hours long. I am a proponent of pith. Nevertheless, to those of you who think this movie too long, I would ask: which scenes would you remove, Your Majesty?

Amadeus is practically perfect—sumptuous, miraculous, and epic. Nevertheless, the film’s intimacy, focused mainly on the mythologized relationship between composers Mozart and Salieri, is most developed. Mozart is prodigious, obviously, but also flouting, boyish, and boorish. Salieri is indignant, jealous, tortured, and tortuous. Amadeus is not a biography about Mozart or Salieri, but is about the complex conflict between these two men of unequal talent and political influence.

Amadeus’s style is romantic and opulent, congruous with the foundational and original music of the actual Amadeus Mozart. His delicately structured, blissful pieces with occasional symphonic eruptions are mirrored in the film. Nearly every frame is decadent, its fundamental scenes are taut and well-crafted, and its dramatic payoffs are stirring. The movie was universally acclaimed, winning eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Moreover, its two leads—F. Murray Abraham as Salieri and Tom Hulce as Mozart—were both nominated for Best Actor. Even more incredibly, Abraham won the award, despite surely splitting some of those votes with Hulce.

In film circles, the Mozart character in Amadeus is seen too often as a prop that exists merely to challenge our narrator, Salieri. Salieri is the main character, yes, but the Mozart character develops irrespective of Salieri. If Amadeus were indeed a eponymous biography, it would work nearly as well, because of how developed the Mozart character is. The genius’s relationship with his oppressive father is key. From an extremely young age, Mozart has been trained (“like a monkey”) to please his father through phenomenal music. Even when he is in another city or is dead, his son Mozart feels compelled to please him further. (This, along with Salieri’s view of him, could support a Mozart-as-Jesus interpretation.)

His father is also, throughout the film, seen as a personification of death. This adds to Mozart’s motivation in two ways: his grief, after his father’s death, drives him to write his darkest music; and he is compelled to create everlasting work, even on his deathbed, that will live beyond his own death through posterity.

Antonio Salieri, usually seen as Amadeus's main character, idolizes Mozart from a young age and longs to be a similarly great composer. Salieri maintains that he wanted to create music in order to sing the word of God, but it is easily discerned that this is a mere pretense, that what Salieri truly wants is fame and admiration and, most of all, talent that can be used for political gain. When Mozart comes to Vienna and proves Salieri to be comparatively mediocre, Salieri feels divinely punished—directly even, since he thinks Mozart to be “the voice of God.” (“Amadeus” literally translates to “love of God.”) Because of this direct connection between Mozart and God from Salieri’s perspective it is the relationship between Salieri and the Almighty that is central to Amadeus.

Through the rest of the film, Salieri is awe-struck by the miraculous work of Mozart, and effectively undercuts him at every turn. “Through my influence, I saw to it Don Giovanni was played only five times in Vienna. But, in secret, I went to every one of those five, worshipping sounds I alone seemed to hear.” The movie’s resolution nears once Salieri, dressed in the father’s deathly costume, urges Mozart to write a requiem mass, which Salieri plans to perform at Mozart’s funeral once he kills him. He would steal God’s voice to spite Him.

This task, combined with financial trouble and continual grief, finally drives Mozart to his death. Ironically, due to Salieri’s consistent sabotages, Mozart’s funeral was trifling—he was buried in a pauper’s mass grave—so even if Salieri’s plan had succeeded his performance of the poignant requiem would have gone unheard. In Amadeus, Antonio Salieri willfully challenges the manifestation of God as well as God himself. Understandably, the patron saint of mediocrity failed on both counts.

Well, there it is.

The History of the Summer Blockbuster

A blockbuster is defined, basically, as a movie with a high budget that is heavily marketed by a major studio whose main purpose is to make money. They are usually fast-paced and action-heavy, oftentimes transforming into cultural phenomena. The term "blockbuster" originates from World War II, describing aerial bombs capable of destroying an entire city block. These movies seek the same kind of impact.

All my life, every summer, American blockbusters dominated the box office. A few recent examples are Spiderman 2 (June, 2004), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (June, 2009) Toy Story 3 (June, 2010), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (June, 2011), and Despicable Me 2 (July, 2013). Nevertheless, this staunchly established trend did not always exist. In fact, studios once saw summers as dead air. Sure, movies were always an escape from the ceaseless sun, but studios usually held off on their biggest projects (blockbusters) during the summer.

There is one film most responsible for this massive shift in the industry: Steven Spielberg's Jaws. Inspecting the film's release, one can see how similar it is to the summer blockbusters of today. The film grossed over $7 million over the first weekend, Universal Studios spent nearly $2 million promoting the film, and its tone was action-heavy and suspenseful, with some comic relief.

Studio executives took notice of this surprisingly massive success, and began to model their releases after it. Two years later, in late May, the ultimate blockbuster franchise was launched by 20th Century Fox: Star Wars. Its release resembled Jaws's and its success was even greater, ultimately grossing almost $800 million. It is the formulaic success of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg—who also directed summer hits Raiders of the Lost Ark (launching the Indiana Jones franchise)—that set the precedent for the kind of movies you're likely to see this summer.

My Favorite Film of Last Summer: "The Florida Project"

While my next post will discuss the history and current climate of summer blockbusters, here I'd like to talk about a different kind of film: the summer indie. My favorite film released last summer had a budget of merely $2 million, released not by a major studio but by A24, an independent studio that's only been around for five years. That film is The Florida Project, first screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the middle of May.

First of all, The Florida Project is sooo Florida. I've spent a good amount of time there, and I've never seen a film capture its troubles and gaudy dilapidation so well. Yet, it isn't exclusively a Floridian story. In fact, these kind of stories are told all the time, though rarely with such grace. For those of you who have seen Truffaut's The 400 Blows, imagine relentless garishness instead of black-and-white—and kids who actually deserved to go to jail. And like that movie, The Florida Project does a masterful job of showing kids as they really are—from making up rules to stupid games and getting angry when their friend breaks them to kind of genius ideas like candy forks. These kids understand their situation, their poverty more than anyone thinks. 

The child star is Moonee, a deviant six-year-old who runs wild all summer through the only overrun motel her mother Halley can afford. To Moonee and friends, it is a theme park. Sean Baker handles these characters with amazing empathy and compassion—sensitively portraying the plight of poverty across America set beside the insensitive who can never comprehend. (The most clear example of this is when the new motel manager refuses Halley at the door with no regard for her safety or even her dignity.) With this understanding, there aren’t gaudy scenes of melodramatic despair that panhandle for pity. 

Even the token crying-in-the-bathroom scene is understated and quickly cut away from. The difficulty Moonnee and Halley face and the monotony of poverty isn’t lost on Baker, but neither is an honest assessment of them. Like the motel manager Bobby, he loves them but holds them accountable, and doesn’t shy away from showing Halley’s irresponsibility as a parent or her prostitution, even if she’s forced into it. This isn't a sermon or an admonition; this is a portrait of a few lives.

The probably abstract ending reveals the heart of The Florida Project: kids dealing with impossibly difficult circumstances just by being kids.

Mi Blog es su Blog: Welcome to This Summer of Film!

Hello, readers! I'm Ben Elliott. (My middle name is Scott, so I guess B.S. Elliott could be my pen name.) Through this blog I intend to update and educate you on the developments in film during this summer.

This blog will be equally shaped for those who see movies as a lighthearted pastime and those who see film as a serious art form. I want to explore more recreational films in a complex way, while exploring complex films in a way that is recreational to read. The "summer blockbuster," spawned by Steven Spielberg's 1975 smash hit Jaws, has continued to become more and more prominent. Deadpool 2, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ocean's 8, and Incredibles 2 have already taken advantage of those summer seats. (You'll notice that all of these are either a sequel or a re-make, a trend I will explore in the future.) With these timely blockbusters also comes the steady stream of work from more "serious" directors unconcerned with box-office statistics.

While being from and currently living in the United States certainly skews my perspective, I will try my best to be cognizant of film's developments throughout the world. Subtitles are going out of fashion, fast, but to limit one's scope to merely American film is a grave mistake. The history of film is an interwoven pattern of international innovation: William Kennedy Dickson, of Scotland, is considered the true "father of film," inventing the early motion picture camera; Alfred Hitchcock (England), Orson Welles (America), Robert Bresson (France), Sergei Eisenstein (Soviet Union), Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy), and Akira Kurosawa (Japan) are among the most influential directors of all time. The United States is still the largest film industry in the world economically, but countries like China, the United Kingdom, Japan, and India do not lag far behind.

Of course, I cannot keep up with everything. But casting a wide net such as this leads to a better catch, and I encourage you to apply the same philosophy not only in the movies you watch but in the life you live. I look forward to what I will catch, to the movies I will see, and to the readers I'll interact with.

Until next time.