–By Sam Hendrian– Contains Minor Spoilers The greatest value of art is that it offers us a window into another human person, if only for a fleeting moment. More often than not, this window becomes a mirror, and we realize that no matter who we each are and where we come from, our similarities outweigh our differences. Amazon Prime’s original series The Wilds is perhaps the most powerful plea for empathy I have seen onscreen in a long time. There were times throughout watching the first season’s ten episodes when I literally felt the pain of one or more of the characters, even though their life ..read more

By Matthew Sawczyn I don’t think I will ever forget that phone call. It came at an awkward and unexpected time, as most changes seem to. I had been in California for five years, and Los Angeles for three. I had worked tirelessly, networked endlessly, and dreamed longingly. I had acquired that strange cocktail of jaded and pragmatic that creatives gain after some time… hopeful, yes, but never allowing oneself too much excitement. After all, excitement leads to disappointment, and it’s better to play the arts loose and cool, rather than emotional and possibly wounded. It’s a thick skin mentality ..read more

–By Sam Hendrian– Contains Spoilers It is safe to say that after staying up to 2:30 AM watching I’m Thinking of Ending Things for a second time within 48 hours, I have never been so profoundly haunted and baffled by a cinematic experience. This new Netflix film from writer/director Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich) is perhaps equivalent to an abstract painting, eliciting a strong reaction of “What was that?” upon first glance that is eventually followed by “Wow, maybe there is more there than I realized.” Though it tackles a wide variety of existenti ..read more

– By Joe Campbell – At least once a year when I was a kid, my parents would take me and my younger sister to the local drive-in movie theater.  After picking our prime parking spot, my dad would unhook the middle double seat of our minivan, place it next to the car, break out the blankets, and crank up the car radio.  Surrounded by trees and cars, back hatches open and the sound of the movie emanating from every car in the open field, it was a unique experience we always looked forward to. But the drive-in was never our first choice when it came to theatrical entertainment, despite t ..read more

– By Maria Andress – After two postponements due to Covid-19, the feature film Fatima finally released this past weekend. With many theaters still in shutdown and the film primarily released on streaming,  Marco Pontecorvo’s new film in the faith genre (and first film in English) won’t be garnering huge box office success. However, its 87% Audience Rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the Critics Consensus “Hard not to respect but difficult to love” are testaments to a knowledgeable adaption of Fatima. With a meandering European artistic style similar to that of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life ..read more

By Matthew Sawczyn “Dear Lord, you died at thirty-three. I begin my life at thirty-three.” Thus prays Fr. Damien upon landing at Molokaʻi, the island where “no patient leaves except in a coffin.” The year is 1873. The terrifying, still mysterious scourge of leprosy ravages the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, and the island of Molokaʻi has been designated as a quarantine colony, where suspected patients are permanently sent. In perpetual isolation, the conditions on the island are atrocious; the demoralized, despairing population gives itself over to every sin. As adventuring novelist Robert Louis Stevenso ..read more

–By Sam Hendrian– “I feel like I have this hole inside me that’s always been there. Like this emptiness. I’m always trying to fill it with something… I’ve tried to fill it with God. I have. But I… I just don’t know how.” These words spoken by a deeply lost young Muslim man named Ramy (comedian Ramy Youssef) to a wise sheikh named Ali Malik (two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali) adequately capture not only the theme of the entire show, but the theme of countless real people’s lives no matter what their religion is. While tonally uneven and sometimes a bit uncomfortable to watch, the second seas ..read more

– By Marielle Cuccinelli – Contains spoilers for all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender I was skeptical the first time I started watching Avatar: the Last Airbender. There was only one girl in the main cast, after all, which is one of the top tropes out there – the Token Female Character, who not only is fated to be the Male Hero’s love interest, but also bears the responsibility of representing and being relatable to all the very diverse and dissimilar women in the audience. I have a deep-seated dislike for the Token Female Character (TFC), as her countless iterations have almost nev ..read more

By James Powers I remember reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a kid and having my mind blown when, at the end, the four Pevensie siblings return to 1940’s England and find themselves children again after having already grown to adulthood in Narnia. What a weird experience that must be, I thought, to go back to childhood after having grown up. And to then grow up again, in completely different circumstances and therefore (perhaps?) as a completely different person. To live one-and-a-half lifetimes, basically.  The idea both fascinated and unsettled me. Although I couldn’t arti ..read more

– By Marielle Cuccinelli – I’d like to start by saying I had all kinds of writers block trying to get this article moving. Seriously, as I write these first two sentences, I’ve been procrastinating for longer than I care to admit because I didn’t know what to say to start this article. So here goes just jumping in. I should say right off the bat that I’m talking about writer’s block specifically from a fiction writer’s perspective. I would imagine some of the suggestions I’ve compiled would be helpful for any form of writing, creative or otherwise. First, we should make sure to delineate the d ..read more