Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Top 50 Films of 2021

Roger Ebert once said that cinema is an empathy machine. I believe it’s also a remembering machine. “Remembrance,” though not apparent in all of my selections, is the theme that most often guides a list — composed of documentaries, interrogations of personal and shared histories, and attempts to reconnect with ancestors — of my favorite…

January 7, 2022
‘A Quiet place ii:’ Is Too CONCERNED WITH FUTURE FILMS

Rating: 2/4 Lee Abbott (John Krasinski) pulls up in his pick-up truck on main street. A long tracking shot captures him walking past the town’s small businesses: a couple wave from the local diner, a dog sits in a truck. Everybody knows everyone in this tiny enclave. It’s the kind of place where Lee can…

May 18, 2021
‘Godzilla vs. Kong’: Pure Spectacle in a Battle for the Ages

Rating: 3/4 With regards to the latest installment in the contemporary kaiju franchise reboot, Godzilla vs Kong, I could complain about why the terribly drawn human characters needlessly suck the oxygen from the main fighting attraction. I could explicate the ways the nonsensical plot undermines a taut two-hour runtime. Or how some fine actors waste…

March 29, 2021
iNTERVIEW: TASTING HISTORY’S Max mILLER

2020 was a year of extreme changes in our day to day lives as the COVID pandemic spread into every facet of our world, mostly for the worst. However, there was a silver lining: a vast, wonderful expansion of personal learning and experimentation as we struggled to fill our time in and around quarantine. One…

March 4, 2021
‘Dara of Jasenovac:’ Amplifies the Forgotten Casualties of The Holocaust

Rating: 4/4 The Holocaust may be one of the most, if not the most widely portrayed event in media, especially when you look at European cinema in comparison to the United States, but it is traditionally very single-faceted. Yes, obviously the majority of portrayals will involve the Jewish extermination; they were the highest casualty rate…

February 27, 2021
‘Night of the Kings:’ [Sundance 2021 Review]

Rating: 4/4 It’s said that humanity, regardless of borders and boundaries, can all be united by the same simple things: food, music, art, and stories. Whether through speech, sign language, or pictograms, the art of storytelling has existed probably as long as the human animal was able to communicate. And it has only expanded in…

February 25, 2021
‘Eight for silver:’ [Sundance 2021 Review]

Rating: 2/4 The werewolf wears many suits of fur in horror cinema. It can symbolize the animalistic nature of mankind, primal rage, destructive hedonism, even puberty. They vary in morality as well: from neutral, to evil, to an almost protector figure like a “lupus dei”. A rarer route, one which director Sean Ellis takes in…

February 25, 2021
Top 25 Films of 2020

Contrary to popular belief, the pandemic did not significantly dent the wealth of cinematic offerings. This is the third year I’m accumulating my end of the year list (which admittedly is coming very late after 2020) and it’s the hardest I’ve worked to whittle down my viewings to a select set of favorite films. Some…

February 20, 2021
‘Knocking:’ [Sundance 2021 Review]

Rating: 4/4 Mental illness is the backbone of the horror genre. From penny dreadfuls and the eerie short stories about “madness” like The Yellow Wallpaper to seminal works like To The Lighthouse and films such as Jacob’s Ladder and Relic, the fragility and malleability of the mind is a fertile ground in which to grow…

February 20, 2021
‘In the Earth:’ [Sundance 2021 Review]

Rating: 1.5/4 2020 was a long year for all of us. It was only a matter of time before the endless specter of the COVID pandemic was woven into a film with all the questions of human nature, selfishness, and our helplessness in the face of the natural world. UK director Ben Wheatley (Kill List,…

February 20, 2021

Got any book recommendations?