I love this so much. Let's start there. Spoiler-free review. The storytelling on display in Stranger Things is so entrenched in who I am as an adult that there was no way for this not to feel personal. At a time where pop-culture references get tacked on to token pseudo-geeks, the dialogue between the friends in Stranger Things felt like an honest necessary… Continue reading Stranger Things, Perfect Things: More Than Just Nostalgia
This. Is. Perfect. Even though these are the first 8 minutes of the series, I felt like it was seasons into the show—I identified with the characters that much and that quickly. It feels like a mashup of Goonies, X-Files, and even a little Twin Peaks. The score is fantastic. It's loud and obvious and… Continue reading The First Eight Minutes of Stranger Things
All too often, the book a film is based on becomes the default watermark for the story being told. And why shouldn’t it be? After all, it existed first, doesn’t that inherently make it the ideal form of the story? Some would say that the more you stray from the source material, the less successful your… Continue reading The Martian: Elevating the Source Material
Richard Barrick 