What is X about? The main thing to understand about X is that it's a metafilm. What does that mean? It means that the movie is essentially a commentary on movies and ...

Eddington has so much going on that it’s easy to feel lost. Thankfully, our First Rule of Film Analysis holds true: if you compare the beginning to the end, narrative and thematic intention becomes ...

Ryan Coogler uses the opening shot of Sinners to establish the film’s primary theme: freedom. Modern cinema has defaulted to using the very beginning of the movie as a thesis for the story’s main ...

If you want a quick explanation of A Complete Unknown, here it is. A Complete Unknown has two levels. The first is Bob Dylan’s journey into and out of the folk scene. Initially, it’s something he ...

The end of Heretic is designed to make viewers wonder what information is relevant or irrelevant. For example, there’s a whole stretch of the film where Mr. Reed wants Barnes and Paxton to believe ...

I think we can all agree that when you first watch Black Swan the immediate questions you have are “How much was real? What was real? Why was Nina seeing what she saw?” There’s some good news and bad ...

The Silence of the Lambs is, for the most part, a pretty straightforward movie. But it does have two bits of subtext I think are pretty cool. The first has to do with time. And the second with the ...

What is Vanilla Sky about? For those who want a quick answer—Vanilla Sky is pretty straightforward. Everything that Tech Support says in the final scene is true. Tom Cruise is having a lucid dream. He ...

The Substance is an immediate cult classic. It’s arguably the best body horror movie of the 21st century. But also has meaningful, necessary things to say about our relationship with aging and modern ...

Blink Twice joins a long line of r*pe-revenge films that started with Bergman’s The Virgin Spring and has continued through the decades with films like The Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave ...

What is Alien: Romulus about? Alien: Romulus is about the difficulty in leaving the life you’ve known for something new. Whether that’s leaving a third world country or a small town or a job or ...

To get the most out of MaXXXine you have to understand what Ti West has been doing with the X trilogy. The overriding theme is the influence cinema has on individuals (the promise of stardom) and ...