The Pope’s Exorcist
Faith, Fear, and the Fire Within — The Untold Story of The Pope’s Exorcist During the early months of 2023, the Pope’s Exorcist earned attention on the web for a rather unusual reason: Russell Crowe is making an Exorcism movie? The vespa-riding, priest-robed Crowe, speaking with an Italian accent, is the centerpiece of a meme […]
The Wave
The Wave (2019): Justin Long’s Psychedelic Journey into Self-Discovery Justin Long’s character in The Wave (2019) is Frank, a self-absorbed insurance lawyer, who undergoes a radical change after hallucinogen consumption. This part of the movie depicts the protagonist’s journey through a series of surreal and bizarre encounters that permanently change his self and reality. Character […]
Alcatraz
Alcatraz: A Cinematic Journey Through Redemption and Resilience The 1962 film Birdman of Alcatraz was the first in a series of films and shows to feature Alcatraz as a prison. It was the first to showcase the prison as a place for rehabilitation and to highlight the life of Robert Stroud. Called the Birdman of […]
The 5th Wave
The 5th Wave: Struggles Behind the Survival Story The 5th Wave debuted in 2016 and subsequently joined an increasingly saturated market of young adult dystopias, as the audience had already been introduced to The Hunger Games and Divergent and their blended genres of dystopic narratives with adolescent rebellion. The film adaptation of Rick Yancey’s best […]
Radioflash
Radioflash: When Survival on Screen Meets the Real World Within the realm of post-apocalyptic thrillers, 2019’s Radioflash earns a unique place for its chilling what-if scenario of an world silenced by an electromagnetic pulse, its depiction of survival through human faces and fragile connections, and its ability to combine the realism of human experience to […]
Ferrari
Ferrari: Racing Through Story, Speculation, and the Theories that Followed For Michael Mann, the director of Ferrari, it was not just another biopic. Ferrari was a piece of cinema that examined one of the most demoralizing periods of Enzo Ferrari’s life—1957. Many critics zeroed in on Adam Driver’s brooding embodiment of Ferrari, but many fans […]
Miss Bala
Beauty, Bullets, and Survival: The Journey of Miss Bala When Miss Bala was announced in 2018 as a Hollywood remake of the acclaimed 2011 Mexican film of the same name, expectations swirled like wildfire. The original was a gritty festival darling that showcased how innocence gets consumed by crime. The American version promised bigger scope, […]
San Andreas
When the Earth Shakes, What Really Matters Disaster films have always had a peculiar appeal among viewers. They evoke memories of a time when we had to confront our own vulnerability, our inherent fragility, and, our resistance before the brutality of nature – and still manage to cling to everything that we love and hold […]
Into the Storm
When the Sky Became the Villain In 2014, the first teaser for Into the Storm was released, and audience members leaned in, eager to see the monstrous tornadoes devouring towns and the roars of the gigantic storm. It was as if the storms were alive and audiences felt the terror of beings sucked in. It […]
The Shallows
Not Just a hSark Survival Story Upon its release in 2016, Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows was dismissed by some as nothing more than a “shark thriller.” In the wake of Jaws, the genre became a cult favorite, and countless B-horror films reduced sharks to mindless killing machines and props to horror. The Shallows, however, accomplished […]