I first heard of Avatar: The Last Airbender the way many people my age did: on a Nickelodeon commercial. But this was before streaming, so it would be more than a decade before I could piece those random reruns into a coherent narrative. When I finally did, I found a story that lost none of its power. Here was a children’s show tackling genocide, belonging, war, and sexism with a level of nuance that many modern adult shows struggle to match. After several ill-fated attempts

It’s fitting that Christopher Nolan, perhaps the foremost myth-maker of our time, would adapt one of the oldest epics in the Western canon. Based on Homer’s tale of a grizzled general finding his way home after surviving the Trojan War, this is the first time Nolan has genuinely made me feel something. Whereas his earlier work often seemed to privilege spectacle over substance, what surprised me about his take on this ancient tale is how intimate it is. Nolan's primary focus

At first glance, Mexico’s first stop-motion feature and the fifth installment of Pixar’s biggest franchise have little in common—but both films arrive at a moment when it seems like every day a new celebrity gives a sponsored statement about the so-called inevitability of AI. In an era of monetized defeatism and corporate slop, there has been an active effort to celebrate human artists. While cinema in all its forms is an art (for some more than others…), the handmade nature

Having helped create the term ‘blockbuster’ with the enormous success of Jaws (1975), it’s fair to say Steven Spielberg has become emblematic of major studio filmmaking, one of the foundations of modern American mythmaking. His movies often locate conflict within a few corrupt individuals, suggesting that once they are exposed, the system can return to functioning as intended. Disclosure Day is burdened by that same naiveté. It feels anachronistic, a holdover from a time when