The purpose of this blog is pretty simple: I’m going to spout off about movies and television, whatever I’m watching at the time. There will be reviews of old things, recent things, new things–there’s no rhyme or reason to what’s going to show up other than that I watched it. As such, this blog is really not going to interest anybody all the time, which is fine as far as I’m concerned. Just don’t go in expecting me to write reviews of every new release and we should be fine.

I am a lawyer in Minnesota who was a film student for part of my time in undergrad in Colorado. As one may guess from that background, I am very analytical and I do have at least some level of knowledge about films, though I am by no means Jim Emerson, let alone an actual filmmaker.

What I watch for in a film is the more objective aspects. I try to break the film down into the point it is making and examine how well each aspect helps it to make that point. Obviously, there is a lot of room for disagreement in this type of analysis, but it’s still important to realize that there is a distinction between how good a film is (which is what I’m analyzing here) and how much one enjoys it. The idea of reducing a film to its “point” is something that also deserves some explanation. My basic position is that films are too short to provide a truly strong story with deep characterizations, the way a good novel does. As a result, they can only make a single point each. To me, the interesting aspect of filmmaking is the ways in which filmmakers make their points, especially visually. That’s where I tend to focus.