Awesome Film Essays

While unusual movies are still being made by directors like Yorgos Lanthimos, movie studios let more experimental films reach the big screen in the 1970s. HoloDraco explores some of the best bizarre films of the era, including David Lynch’s Eraserhead, René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet, John Carpenter’s Dark Star, and George Lucas’ THX 1138.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 was one of those rare times when a sequel was even better than the first film. This video essay by CinemaStix looks at how Alfred Molina and effects technicians brought Doctor Octavius to life on the big screen. Amazingly, the medium- and close-up shots used practical effects and puppetry to bring his mechanical tentacles to life.

George Lucas once described the Star Wars films as “basically silent movies.” Clearly, the movies had dialogue, but Danny Boyd of CinemaStix shows how the rhythms created by editing and music tell stories without words. He then explores what Star Wars might have been like as a silent film, plus a Kurosawa-style revamp of Revenge of the Sith.

Even the most anticipated movies can sometimes miss the mark. Can fans fix what the filmmakers got wrong? Pyramid Peak delved into the world of fan editing and talked with HAL 9000, one of the most dedicated and prolific fan editors ever. Fan edits can improve bad movies, and sometimes remix them into a whole new artistic vision. (Thanks, Rob!)

Superheroes with the ability to move at super speeds can quickly get the jump on bad guys. But as Film Junkie explains, it’s also a challenging superpower to represent consistently on screen, and often results in these characters being sidelined. But he also points out some ways to depict speedsters effectively.

Every Frame a Painting is back. The world is healing. Or not; they’re doing only a limited series, after all. But we’ll take it. Without much fanfare, YouTube’s OG film essay channel launches straight into the history, strengths, and weaknesses of the sustained two-shot – a film perspective where two characters stay in a single scene for a long time.

Some screenwriters can spend years writing a movie script. On the other hand, filmmaker John Hughes would bang out a script in days. CinemaStix dives deep into the process behind creating the Hughes classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which was shot mainly from a first draft and required revisions on set and clever re-cutting by Hughes and editor Paul Hirsch.

The earliest movies were filmed in black and white. Then, in the 1930s, the first color movies appeared. Cameron from NationSquid explains how Technicolor created the illusion of color using a prism to split red, green, and blue images onto three black and white film strips and then developed them with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black dyes.

George Lucas once said that the Star Wars movies were “designed as silent movies.” His approach was to let music and visuals drive the story. Danny Boyd from CinemaStix explores this concept and whether watching the films without dialogue makes them even more powerful. If you ask us, it’s John Williams’ masterful scores that truly elevated the franchise.

Accented Cinema neatly sums up the fundamental difference between Godzilla films: “American Godzilla is about Godzilla; Japanese Godzilla is about Life.” Giant monsters beating the crap out of each other can indeed make for a fun movie. But Japan’s Godzilla films show that the kaiju’s ultimate power is helping people reflect on real-world catastrophes.

Christopher Nolan loves to play with time in his films. Movies like Memento, Inception, Dunkirk, and Tenet each take advantage of the nature of time to tell stories and make audiences use their brains. Nerdstalgic’s film essay delves into Nolan’s effective manipulation of time throughout his filmography.

The sounds you hear in movies can dramatically enhance what you see on screen. But other than dialogue, most movie audio isn’t created on the soundstage, it’s added in post-production by foley artists and sound editors. Paul E.T. explores the importance of sound effects, music, and speech in filmmaking.

Andor starts with a slow burn and gradually elevates its way into one of the best Star Wars series yet, brilliantly tackling issues like fascism, greed, and revolution. It also feels like one of the most relatable Star Wars stories to date. Film buff Thomas Flight explores how Andor’s visual approach makes its locations feel so real.

David Fincher is known for his fastidious approach to filmmaking. He’s a staunch believer in digital technology and visual effects to bring his fiction to life. But when making a movie like Mank that’s supposed to look like it was shot in the 1940s, is digital better than analog? Video essayist CinemaStix explores the topic.

Master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock had a thing for staircases, going so far as naming one of his movies The 39 Steps. Editor and Hitchcock fan Max Tohline created this montage of 39 staircase shots from 39 films directed by Hitch, from Easy Virtue in his early career through his penultimate 1972 film Frenzy.

After a long hiatus, film essayist Kaptain Kristian is back with a great video about the subtle and not-so-subtle audiovisual tricks that Stanley Kubrick and music editor Gordon Stainforth pulled to intensify the horror and suspense of The Shining. As he mentions, it’s a film that masterfully reveals more with each viewing.