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Cinema and society

Essays exploring how film reveals politics, power, and the myths shaping modern society.

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Hot Fuzz and Institutional Failure

When doing your job becomes a threat

The Lives We Were Promised: The Art of Disappointment

What happens when the life we imagined never arrives? Perhaps the answer can be found in Frances Ha, Fight Club and Revolutionary Road.

What Happens When Children Disappear?

What movies and TV can teach us about a world of demographic decline

Frances Ha – The Art of Becoming a Real Person

Sometimes, growing up means letting go.

Short Cuts: The Odyssey Beyond the Culture War

Three thousand years later, we're still talking about The Odyssey and just not always for the right reasons.

Shortcuts: Who Owns Your Taste?

How movie lovers became one of the most valuable datasets in surveillance capitalism.

Is It Time for a New Generation of Movie Brats?

The directors who reinvented Hollywood once came from film schools. The next generation may come from YouTube.

Review: Leviticus (2026)

An intriguing premise that falls short

Short Cuts: Disclosure Day and the Question We Can't Stop Asking

On a possible first contact with aliens, secrecy, and humanity's place in the universe

Short Cuts: Obsession and the Life We Think We're Missing

On loneliness, fantasy, and the dangerous belief that one person can change everything

American History X: Powerful and provocative. But morally too easy?

Few films occupy the strange cultural position of American History X. Through word of mouth, controversial subject matter, and the sheer force of its performances, the film has become something close to modern canon. Highly ranked on IMDbs top 250, frequently shown in classrooms around the world, and remembered largely through the force of Edward Norton’s and Edward Furlong’s performances. For…

The Wolfpack: Cinema and Society

How the documentary The Wolfpack reveals cinema not merely as entertainment, but as a gateway to identity, adulthood, and society itself

Employee of the Month: Nightcrawler and the Logic of the News Cycle

In a world driven by attention, truth is just another casualty

Shortcuts: Modern Cinema Taught Us the Wrong Story About Love

The ending is where the real story begins

Short Cuts. Always Being Watched: Clarice Starling and the Male Gaze

Visual power, gender, and isolation in The Silence of the Lambs

Analyzing the Intro #2: Fargo

Endless snow, a lone car and the quiet horror of ordinary people

Analyzing the Intro #1: The Graduate

A moving walkway, a passive man and the quiet anxiety of entering adult life

Short Cuts: City of God and the System That Never Ends

When system of violence reproduce themselves

Short Cuts: Bugonia and the Feeling of Distance

When class distance starts to feel like another reality

Trainspotting and the Rejection of Modern Life

Why Mark Renton’s “Choose Life” speech still resonates in a world of work, consumption, and quiet dissatisfaction

Did The Truman Show Predict the future?

From Feudal Lords to Platform Gods