Awesome Film Essays

“Time is the story and we are the characters.” The Royal Ocean Film of Society looks back at Michael Apted’s Up Series. Arguably the best reality show ever, its 48-year (and counting) span, grounded perspective and willing cast make for a fragmented mirror of our lives.

Lessons from the Screenplay compares Rogue One and The Force Awakens to teach the basics of storytelling: creating active protagonists, adding flaws for characters to overcome, introducing events that drive the story forward, and more.

(SPOILERS) “Arrival depicts humanity’s response to a profound paradigm shift. Which is also what I call my bowel movements.” An extra sarcastic Garyx Wormuloid expounds on the sci-fi drama Arrival and its themes of time and perspective.

(Spoilers/PG-13: Language) The Showtime series Shameless is one of our favorite TV shows. The writing and acting is top notch, and its ability to blend laugh-out-loud comedy and tragedy is unmatched. CrackerJacked looks at just a small bit of what makes it work so well.

(PG-13: Language, SPOILERS) Wisecrack argues that Rick’s obsession with szechuan sauce is no bombshell. Instead, it’s merely another display of the show’s advocacy of Albert Camus’ brand of absurdism: existence is meaningless, and trying to find meaning is a fool’s errand.

CineFix gives their top examples for each of a movie’s five chapters: the call to adventure, the start of the adventure, the adventure itself, the climax, and the resolution. We’re sad that Your Name, The Usual Suspects or Se7en aren’t even mentioned here.

“A man whose fear is greater than his desire… cannot be a pivotal character.” Lessons from the Screenplay breaks down the basics of a TV pilot – the episode that is used to sell the show to networks – and how Vince Gilligan pulled it off for Breaking Bad.

(PG-13: Language) Throughout Jack Nicholson’s 60+ years on the big screen, he’s wowed us with his ability to put the fear of god into other characters, and us as moviegoers. Nerdwriter1 explores Jack’s special gift for using hostility and fear to tell his characters’ stories.

Editor Vugar Efendi presents a side-by-side look at a few of the many times that scenes from real life have been recreated in movies. While filmmakers clearly take some artistic license, it’s cool to see how the world is reflected on the big screen.

Wisecrack convincingly argues that the Nolan brothers bit off way more than they could chew for the Dark Knight trilogy’s finale. Despite being nearly 3 hours long, the movie didn’t have enough time to be both a remake of A Tale of Two Cities and a conclusion to the trilogy.

We’ve sure come a long way since the cheesy opening titles of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, and now the title sequences are as artfully made as the shows themselves. WIRED takes a look at what happened to get us from there to here. Be sure to check out Art of the Title too.

(Gore) Elem Klimov’s Come and See is widely regarded as one of the best war movies ever made. Channel Criswell explains how Klimov broke from the fundamentals of sound and perspective in order to effectively express the mind-breaking brutality of war.

(PG-13: Language) “The king stay the king.” In movies and TV shows, a game of chess isn’t just shown to imply that a character is smart. Now You See It points out the many implications and purposes of showing the strategic board game to viewers.

(PG-13, Flashing images) “It’s a messy, crude world. And sometimes the best way to show that is to be just as messy and just as crude.” The Royal Ocean Film Society tries to contextualize the work of the controversial animator and filmmaker Ralph Bakshi.

The Fast & Furious series banks on beautiful cars, beautiful people and beautiful stunts. But it wouldn’t be around if its filmmakers didn’t nail the basics of car chase scenes, which mainly involve giving viewers a consistent direction to contextualize the action.

Lessons from the Screenplay uses the script for the opening scene in Inglorious Basterds to explain how suspense works in films. Unlike plot twists, suspense works best when you reveal the twist early, then milk it for as long as you can. And when you’ve cast Christoph Waltz.

Sales middleman CostFixed hawks its services with… a movie essay? It’s well done though, and stands on its own. It uses Ben Affleck’s famous speech from Boiler Room to analyze how those with the gift of gab can hook people in using only their words and our desires.

The Royal Ocean Film Society tips his hat to the people who restore and repair old movies. Restoring and repairing film negatives requires tons of research, patience and steady hands. Thankfully, high quality digital formats and the Internet is making it easier to save movies.

Wes Anderson loves his horizontal dolly shots, but he’s not the only director to use this technique, as Candice Drouet of Really Dim shows in her latest montage, which features only shots which track from left to right. View the full list of films on Vimeo.

Works of art are products of their time, but critics and audiences are even more so. The Royal Ocean Film Society points out some of the films that were received horribly when they first came out, only to be praised years later. Will Michael Bay’s – ah we can’t. We can’t do it.

kaptainkristian presents Who Framed Roger Rabbit as a shining example of animated characters combined with live action. The film’s crew worked doubly hard to make the cartoon characters converse and interact convincingly with live actors and real objects.

(Spoilers) Film essayist Nerdwriter1 explores Denis Villeneuve’s science fiction opus, and looks at how the director’s stellar grasp on the language and structures of film so deftly elevates it beyond so many other movies.

Movies are often at their best when they augment or twist reality to visualize that which has no form: concepts, emotions, mental states, illnesses, dreams, nightmares. CineFix presents its picks for the best subjective scenes.