Allegory of the Man Cave
The audience can’t help but stare and laugh and squirm as Craig grapples with the loneliness threatening to tear his life apart.
The film doesn’t treat male loneliness as either pathology or punchline. It just lets it exist, raw and unresolved.
On Paraphrasing Primates and Platonic Plagiarism
Since humankind creates literature, we know that literature is inevitably imbued with human truths and concerns.
Literature creates meaning from what has already happened, recombining ideas in different contexts to explore our lives as human beings.
An Unhinged Upheval
Sinners is director Ryan Coogler at his most unhinged—and perhaps his most inspired.
Imagine The Social Network’s twin-tech trickery meets Inglourious Basterds with a pinch of Get Out, and you’re somewhere in the ballpark of Sinners.
Commodified Freedom
Something feels stagnant about our cultural engagement with sex.
Yes, autonomy and empowerment exist, but only within a system that reinforces the very structures it purports to question.
To Forgo Truffaut
Warfare is not a film in the conventional sense.
There are barely any characters to speak of, no arcs, and no anchors. We’re embedded with a SEAL squad on deployment, but these men are not introduced or developed. They are silhouettes, pulses, steady gazes, and trembling fingers on triggers.
The Dive Bar of Eternal Youth
It’s a dark, unpolished dive.
The bar is charmingly rough around the edges, where the walls feel like they’ve absorbed sweat and spilled drinks over countless unforgettable nights.
The War on “Woke”
What on earth is a woke scone?
A snack with a land acknowledgement? A pastry that self-identifies as a croissant? A radical leftist baked good demanding reparations for colonial tea plantations? No. Apparently, it’s just a scone without butter…
Does Could Imply Should?
Not even the broad shoulders of Jack Black as Steve could carry this picture to success.
Ultimately, the creators of this picture were so absorbed with whether or not they could, they forgot to ask whether or not they should.
The Wealth of Unicorns
In the world of finance, a unicorn is something to be caught, dissected, and monetized.
In Death of a Unicorn, Alex Scharfman takes this premise to a grotesquely literal conclusion.
Seduction by Contradiction
To call Opus a critique of celebrity culture is to reduce it.
It does not merely criticize. It embodies, extends, and ultimately deranges the phenomenon.
Pledging Allegiance: Brotherhood, Beer, and The Making of Men
Misogyny is not an instinct. It is an education.
For many, fraternities provide it.
A Paradox of Performance
FINNEAS does not present the charisma of excess or spectacle.
Instead, he embodies a melancholic observer of love and fame. Can a song about lonely souls survive when sung by thousands?
Maroon Pilled: A Culture of Choice
Consider Joe Rogan, the barbarian Khan of podcasting.
His cultural influence is immense, his ideological commitments slippery, his posture one of insatiable curiosity—unless it comes to skepticism toward institutions, reverence for a vague ideal of masculinity, and a deep distrust of intellectual elites.
Aesthetics of a Sunburnt Sound
In Chicago, it is February. But for this moment, it is summer.
DIVE leaves one imagining vignettes of summertime love and longing, recalling memories of a misspent youth.