To understand One Battle After Another, I want you to think about a garden. If you put time and effort into a garden, it will look nice. If you ignore the garden, then slowly and inevitably other ...

Eddington has so much going on that it’s easy to feel lost. Thankfully, our First Rule of Film Analysis holds true: if you compare the beginning to the end, narrative and thematic intention becomes ...

Ryan Coogler uses the opening shot of Sinners to establish the film’s primary theme: freedom. Modern cinema has defaulted to using the very beginning of the movie as a thesis for the story’s main ...

If you want a quick explanation of A Complete Unknown, here it is. A Complete Unknown has two levels. The first is Bob Dylan’s journey into and out of the folk scene. Initially, it’s something he ...

If you want to understand Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that much of the story boils down to a simple theme: connection. And that explains essentially 95% ...

Bishop Robert Barron had quite the response to Conclave. He said: If you are interested in a film about the Catholic Church that could have been written by the editorial board of the New York Times, ...

The end of Possession can leave you at a complete loss, asking yourself, “What did I just watch?” But don’t give up hope! Possession provides inroads that give us the context necessary to piece ...

The ending of Terrifier 3 is brutal. Like…really brutal. Seemingly, Sienna is left with nothing. So it’s easy to think of the ending as a complete downer, as a pessimistic look at how life is ...

As big and seemingly confounding as Synecdoche, New York seems, it’s actually quite simple. The broader message is that we don’t have much time and we’re prone to waste time. Caden’s life has three ...

What is the point of Speak No Evil? Speak No Evil has two primary themes. The need for healthy honesty and the impact parents have on children. Ben is someone who struggles with healthy honesty while ...

The Substance is an immediate cult classic. It’s arguably the best body horror movie of the 21st century. But also has meaningful, necessary things to say about our relationship with aging and modern ...

What is the point of Strange Darling? Strange Darling is about perception and how quick people are to jump to conclusions based on biases and limited information. The movie portrays that through the ...