My Own Little World

I have no words. Guys, Annihilation is one heck of a movie. It doesn’t hold my hand through its runtime; instead, it forces me to think with the iron grip of its narrative. For that reason, it is one of the most unique movies I have had the pleasure of experiencing in a theater. Of course, this film goes nowhere without director Alex Garland. I remember watching his first film Ex Machina and getting floored by the points it made about human nature by using an artificially intelligent robot to demonstrate our unique ability of attachment and how that could eventually be our downfall as a race. Besides that, that film was beautiful and brilliantly crafted, a slow burn that exploded in a pitch-perfect climax. Annihilation changes the game a little for Garland as he continues his exploration into human nature. This time, the film centers on our desires and how they ultimately will lead us to our self-destruction. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character posits at one point that ...

There's something to be said for old-fashioned filmmaking. Many of my favorite directors use many elements that are considered "outdated" in their films to great success (I'm looking at you, Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg). However, I don't think I've seen a film from the past ten years that is more old-fashioned in its style than The Hateful Eight . That's probably to be expected from a director like Quentin Tarantino. Every single film of his is an homage of some kind to a genre of film that either has gone under the radar or away entirely. He also is a film buff in the most literal sense, going so far as to pay for the installation of one hundred 70mm film projectors worldwide to show a special "Roadshow" version of The Hateful Eight  that adds an overture, intermission, and six more minutes to the already long film. From the opening credits, I noticed two things that made me feel that this film was from a bygone era: the score b...