My Own Little World

I loved the first Kingsman  movie. It was such a breath of fresh air with its ridiculousness and on-the-nose parody of its genre (not too far off from what I felt Deadpool  did with its genre). Matthew Vaughn's direction made it quite a briskly-paced film as well while also having enough substance and good character writing to make it good in the slower, smaller moments. Naturally, I was looking forward to seeing this sequel after such a refreshing initial installment. Unfortunately, Kingsman: The Golden Circle  suffers dearly from a rampant disease in Hollywood: sequelitis. It's that condition that so many second and third installments have where they try to make everything bigger in scope by stuffing every second of the film with subplots upon subplots and new characters upon new characters. This typically results in very poorly paced movies where the audience is seldom given a moment to breathe. And...that's exactly what happened here. Now, I will say that if you...

In 2004, a little band from Las Vegas called The Killers released their first album, Hot Fuss . It rocked the landscape of alternative music, with singles like "Mr. Brightside," "Somebody Told Me," and "All These Things That I've Done" still being played on alt rock stations to this day. That album very much feels like a complete collection of songs and not just like a few tracks slapped together into a record. The same can be said of that album's slightly lesser successor Sam's Town . As The Killers have continued their career, they have never really been able to replicate the coherence of their first two albums. For me, that's a really big deal: album flow is one of the things I look for the most in my music. Without a good flow, albums become haphazard and feel less polished to my ears and severely degrade in quality. Thankfully, guys, Wonderful Wonderful  is an album that feels like an album. The flow here is much, much smoother t...

If I was writing my review of Breaking Bad  after its fourth season, I would be telling you that this is easily one of the best things I have ever seen on television. Every season is better than the last, and the character development and pacing is more on point than any other film or TV series. However, the fifth season changes everything. In its final sixteen episodes, Breaking Bad  goes from one of the best television series of all time to one of the best things ever put to film. This is  entirely due to the show's writing. Vince Gilligan, the creator of the show, is an absolute genius when it comes to pacing and character development. In reality, despite a lot of breakneck tension and thrills through its first four seasons, Breaking Bad  is quite a slow burn of a show. The character of Walter White, brilliantly portrayed by a never-to-be-underestimated Bryan Cranston, often seems just on the cusp of turning into an absolute monster; however, somehow, someway,...

John Mark McMillan is the most famous guy you've never heard of in Christian music. Since penning the modern classic "How He Loves," he has largely lived in the small-but-active indie sector of Christian music, working his way from alternative rock on his debut The Song inside the Sounds of Breaking Down  all the way to folk-tinged indie on his last effort Borderland . That last one made me fall in love with the man's writing style and his ability to weave seamlessly between complexity and simplicity while never losing lyrical meaning (if you want an example, go listen to "Future/Past"). Because of Borderland , I preordered Mercury & Lightning  in January. Yes, that's over seven months ago. I have been sitting on pins and needles ever since, waiting to hear how McMillan would continue his stellar career. From where he was on his last project, Mercury & Lightning  feels like a natural progression musically. McMillan continues on his Springst...

Kings Kaleidoscope is literally (in Chris Traeger's voice) the best thing that ever happened to my taste in music. They partially restored my faith in Christian music's ability to be good (not an easy thing to do for me). Their only two full-length albums have gotten perfect scores from me, and one of them is even in my top 5 albums of all time. Some people would argue I have a massive bias towards them and their music. To a point, I agree: I am biased towards Kings Kaleidoscope's material. Here's the thing, though: it's actually that good.  More so than almost any other artist in Christian music, they blend musical ingenuity with superb songwriting and lyricism. Their debut flipped the switch on a new generation of worship music, while their sophomore effort progressed their sound into a relatively sparser palette while also shifting their aim from worship music to music for the Christian life. Continuing their near-perfect catalog is their latest release, Th...

Warning: I will minorly spoil this movie in this post.  I have this thing with romance movies, that thing being that most of them are really, really not good. There is a definite formula to the genre that I think is becoming so overused that any film eschewing it for something different (*cough* Silver Linings Playbook *cough*) becomes one of the best of the genre in my mind. I kind of wish this wasn't the case, especially now that I am in a very committed relationship with someone who happens to love these movies. However, a couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend somehow got me to actually sit down and watch The Notebook  with her, and I realized something about this formula: there's a reason it's there, and I'd like to bet that that reason is The Notebook . It was successful among audiences, bringing in over five times its budget at the box office, as well as garnering a bit of a cult following in the years since its release. People love the unabashed sentimentality...

I won't talk for too long about how much I love Christopher Nolan's directing, but the long and short of it is that the man is my inspiration for even examining the technical aspects of film and seeing how they impact the emotions I feel while watching a movie. I have rated five of his films before this one, and four of them are tens (the odd one out is The Dark Knight Rises  at a nine, for what it's worth). I kind of like him a lot. That being said, I never expected him to release a film like Dunkirk . One of the hallmarks of Nolan's films is how they wear their emotions and philosophy on their sleeve. I really like this because it helps me see the connection between the filmmaking and the other stuff. The Dark Knight  does this a lot thanks to Heath Ledger's Joker, as does Interstellar  with all of its talk of the link between love and time. Now, when I heard Dunkirk  was actually a thing, I figured it would be similar in this aspect to Nolan's other fil...