Film Analysis

Moving pictures are exactly that: pictures that move. Every single frame can be its own painting, carefully crafted to evoke so many emotions. Lighting, wardrobe, camera angles, and frame composition all feed into this, but the color palette brings it all together. Colors can be used for all kinds of purposes, whether to set the mood, enhance a theme, cause dissonance in the viewer, or simply to look cool and stand out by using unusual hues....

Some movie directors are infamous for this—like David Lynch, who’s a master at making you think hard about his films long after you’ve left the theater. His movies inspire a kind of confusion that compels you toward deep investigation and reflection. But few directors are like Lynch. Most directors set out to evoke a specific emotion or leave you with a particular message in mind with the way their movies wrap up....

For a long time, men aspired to the stereotypical American Dream: that men had to be macho leaders of families living in a halcyon housing estate, complete with ruddy-faced children and a lovable dog. Various countercultures pushed toward different extremes away from traditional norms, including hippie culture, androgyny, punk rock, and more. Movies and TV shows began to reflect the changing of tides as new auteurs took notes from the French New Wave....

Comic book movies, space movies, dystopian futures, dinosaurs brought back to life—they’re all related to the sci-fi genre. And is it really a surprise? One of the appeals of cinema is being able to experience stories that just aren’t possible in the real world. But hasn’t that always been true? We’ve always wanted to hear, see, and experience characters and virgin worlds waiting to be discovered. Then why is the trend in sci-fi movie popularity so specifically recent?...

We’ve seen these nerd stereotypes play out in dozens of movies and TV shows, and it has given nerds a bad reputation. While public perception of nerds has changed over the years, it’s still often loaded with negative connotations—of cowardice, of poor social skills, of sexual frustration, of contempt from the people around them. Sometimes these traits are true for nerds, but rarely to the exaggerated degree we see in Hollywood and on television....