Marty Supreme fits into the milieu of pop-culture anxieties of contemporary America, being a great 'American Film' made for a lesser age and time, filtered through the lens of American Jewish identity and the tussle between individualism and assimilation. Marty Supreme, in many ways, feels like a spiritual successor to Uncut Gems, with its exploration of the American Jewish identity and being about the cultivation of greatness within a hyper capitalist world. Marty Supreme is

The Smashing Machine marks a new era in the Safdie Brothers' filmography, with the eponymous brothers splitting up at the peak of their power due to a growingly dysfunctional relationship, and are willing to explore new ventures. One of the more intriguing aspects of the Safdie Brothers' solo projects is which elements of their prior films are present in them, akin to a band breaking up to pursue solo projects. With The Smashing Machine, Benny Safdie explores the drug abuse o

Uncut Gems is a crowning achievement and a thesis statement by the Safdie Brothers in their big-budget studio-produced film. It's a film that is in conversation with recurring themes of other works by the Safdie Brothers. However, unlike previous Safdie Brothers works, Uncut Gems filters this tale of self-destructive cycles through a Jewish American identity lens in contemporary urban America, drawing from the vestiges of the Jewish Wave decades prior. Uncut Gems finds Howard

The fourth season of Buffy is a work of chaotic genius. It combines the muddled plotting of a network season with thematically ambitious ideas and ambitious standalone episodes. It's a fascinating season due to its peculiarities and vices. The fourth season of Buffy is about change, as depicted in the episode "Freshman," signalling the start of a new act, or a new arc (in comic book terms). It's about the struggles of creating an authentic identity amidst a hostile world that

Good Time is a great modern-day New York movie. It's essentially a crime odyssey with cyclic abuse and manipulation by our protagonist Connie (Robert Pattinson) due to his inability to take responsibility for his actions from the inciting incident. Good Time is essentially a character study wrapped within the contours of a genre film. It's about a manipulative white guy taking advantage of the inherent system and the exploited people for his own nefarious ends, making it an u

Heaven Knows What is a harrowing piece of work from the Safdie Brothers- crystallizing its themes of cycles of abuse and a snapshot of the heroine subculture of New York. It's a film that straddles the line between documentary work and narrative feature. Heaven Knows What, like the preceding Safdie Brothers works, is observational in its nature about its subject matter. Its episodic narrative, while disjointed on its own, feels cohesive when viewed as a whole. Heaven Knows Wh

The third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a victory lap for the show in its high-school iteration. It's a season that feels relaxed and consolidates the experimental formula from the second season and deliberately mirrors it. As a result, the third season is one of the most impressive seasons of the Buffyverse and Mutant Enemy Productions, with a cohesive season structure from beginning to end, with themes threaded throughout the season. The third season aired from the

Lenny Cooke is a Hoop Dreams-esque, voyeuristic documentary that comments on the futility of the post-modern American Dream and the heightened culture of excess and fame, with a personal bent to it. Hoop Dreams is less of a narrative and more of an amalgamation of fragmented realities, broken dreams, juxtaposed against the modern, harsher realities and the consequences of the heightened excess of culture impacting the titular protagonist, Lenny Cooke. Lenny Cooke highlights t

Daddy Longlegs feels like a missing link between the Safdie Brothers' mumblecore efforts and later efforts like Uncut Gems. It's a personal piece of work from the Safdie Brothers about their relationship with their problematic father. A lot of Safdie Brothers' films are concerned with people being incapable of breaking their cycles of abuse, trauma, and self-sabotaging behaviour. Daddy Longlegs explores this idea with tact, nuance, and depth with Lenny(Ronald Bernstein). The

The Pleasure of Being Robbed is an interesting first feature from Josh Safdie. It feels like a piece of the NY guerrilla filmmaking and the mumblecore movement in the early 2000s. It's certainly an odd feature in its own right. The mumblecore movement defined the indie filmspace in the early 2000s. It was a product of digital technological advancement, offering cheaper video and a low-fidelity approach for independent filmmakers. However, the mumblecore movement was driven by

Buffy Season 2 is a fascinating beast in many ways. It's a cautionary tale about the dangers of losing yourself and your identity in any person. With this, the twisted imagery of sexuality, blood, and vampirism constantly recur throughout the second season. Buffy's second season is centered on the interrogation of what it means to be a slayer for Buffy. Existentialism is a core theme in Buffy's second season, with the second season ruminating on the emotional cost of being a

Hamnet is a cathartic exploration of grief and its relation to art. Its themes of grief, motherhood, and the expression of grief resonate heavily in the modern cultural and social landscape of the post-COVID era. It fits right into Chloe Zhao's oeuvre. A lot of the critical discussion surrounding Hamnet appears to be its idea of "emotionally manipulative" for audiences. However, it feels odd to call out Hamnet for it. As major film critic Roger Ebert pointed out, "Cinema gene

The first season in network television is a learning curve for both the production team and the show. Buffy's first season is no exception to the rule. It contains its fair share of clunkers but remains a trial run for the rest of the show. It's interesting to revisit Buffy Season 1 in the postmodern context of 1990s pop culture, with films like Scream and Pulp Fiction capturing the zeitgeist of the postmodern era. In that sense, Buffy's postmodernism feels very attuned to th

Eternals is destined to be a footnote within the larger MCU. It's messy, flawed, and a beautiful anti-superhero biblical epic. It's a film filled with ambitious ideas and a sense of intimacy. It's a fascinating MCU film that feels constrained by the formula of the MCU. Eternals, unlike its contemporaries within the MCU, is critical of the idea of fetishizing power in and of itself. The central thesis of Eternals lies in the question of wielding power and pondering the existen

Nomadland serves as a capstone for Zhao's unofficial Western trilogy. Nomadland is a film that resonates with the early 2020s, focusing on the erosion of the middle class due to late-stage capitalism, grief, trauma, and a subversion of the frontier myth. Nomadland is a subversive take on the western with the Nomads marking the American Western frontier, but they have no land to settle, no future to work for, unlike cowboy frontier myths. This subversion is a recurring feature

Amy's Dead End Dreamhouse blends surrealism with dark comedy, wrapped in a cheerful veneer, much like Pee Wee's Playhouse. It's also a show that speaks to the existential ennui of Gen Z and to the Internet. Themes of misogyny, criticism of late-stage capitalism, consumer culture, Gen-Z disillusionment, and existential horror are thematically explored within the veneer of laughter and a surreal drumhouse. It's a fascinating show. Essentially, the dreamhouse feels like a repres

The Rider is a powerful deconstruction of American masculinity and the American cowboy archetype. It's a minimalist drama that feels lyrical and poetic in nature and form. The Rider stands out for its vulnerability, trauma, and the idea of broken dreams promised by American masculinity. It feels timely in an era where masculinity is in crisis and constantly interrogated in modern-day culture and politics. The Rider redefines the American West for the 21st century with its fra

Songs My Brothers Taught Me offers a restrained, lyrical perspective on reservation life, with portrayals of marginalized communities that are nuanced yet purposeful and cathartic. Themes of adult dysfunction, poverty, and quiet neglect dominate the narrative with a focus on realism and identity. John Winters(John Reddy) is defined by his identity in his community and the trauma that comes through systemic discrimination. Landscapes in Songs My Brothers Taught Me are integral

Homebound is a powerful indictment of modern-day India with rich character drama and a personal character piece at the forefront. Themes of religious and caste discrimination are explored in Homebound. Ghaywan's films focus on the exploitation and suffering of marginalized people deemed outside of the normative society. In Homebound, religious discrimination is linked to caste discrimination, with the rise in Islamophobia in modern-day India. Homebound is a more cynical film,

Juice is powerful and unflinching. Highlighting the banal evils of patriarchal societies and caste discrimination, it's a striking and effective piece of work from a confident filmmaker. Gendered roles and spaces are common in Indian households that are patriarchal constructs in nature. It's a society that entraps women in labor while exploiting and casually humiliating them in everyday life. Characters trapped by circumstance seem to be a recurring theme in Ghywan's work (i.