“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.” – Stephen Hawking Steven Spielberg will be eighty years old in December. It leaves a lump in the throat to think of what little time we have left to experience new Spielberg. He is as synonymous with cinema as the very cameras capturing the imagery he has ingrained in our collective memory. He is basically his very own genre. There’s somethi

"A star can never die. It just turns into a smile and melts back into the cosmic music, the dance of life." - Michael Jackson The Messiah and the Man: A Masterclass in Narrative Sleight of Hand Genre conventions are inevitable in certain stories. Sports films with the mandatory training montages, the “gearing up” sequence when an ordinary citizen becomes a well-equipped warrior. The plan walkthrough in heist thrillers when the leader lays out the plan showing us how it will

"All systems are corrupt. All governments and all laws exist to benefit those in power." - D.D. Webb Some filmmakers alone are worth the price of admission. Tarantino? I don’t even need to hear the title. Just save me a seat and I’ll be there. Scorsese, Fincher, you already know. Edgar Wright is the kind of filmmaker that could make a movie about a subject I have zero interest in but with him at the helm I’d be there opening day. He has a voice that speaks through his work.

“Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but...