O'GRADY FILM

Shot/reverse shot is about as basic as film language gets: one character speaks; a second responds, back and forth in perfectly matched medium close-ups unti...

As has become my custom of late, I would like to elaborate on my favorite scene in Ride Your Wave. Unfortunately, because it occurs near the very end of the ...

[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS for No Country for Old Men and The Bad Sleep Well; you have been warned!] Spoiler alert: In the Coen Brothers’ a...

Hypothesis: Michael Crichton’s Westworld had an enormous impact on the trajectory of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career. Exhibit A: Yul Brynner plays an implacab...

[The following essay contains SPOILERS; you have been warned!] Both fans and critics of Netflix’s recent adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher seem t...

[WARNING: MAJOR STAR WARS SPOILERS BELOW!] Return of the Jedi’s controversial revelation that Leia was actually Luke’s twin sister all along has never really...

[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Sam Mendes’ 1917; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] While Sam Mendes’ 1917 has earned near-universal critical acclaim, ...

[The following essay may contain MINOR SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame; you have...

I’m an unapologetic fan of The Phantom Menace (though I must confess that I used to be a bit embarrassed to admit it). In the past, I struggled to articulate...

[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Wolverine, and Avengers: Endgame; you have been warned!] Near the end of Spider-...

[The following post contains MAJOR SPOILERS and a whole lot of FANBOY WHINING; consider yourself warned!] The Rise of Skywalker improves significantly on sec...

Not to get excessively sentimental or philosophical, but I had a rather profound epiphany today—triggered by, of all things, a video game. Recently, I’ve bee...

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; you have been warned!] Well, to quote the late Orson Krennic: “We were on the verge of greatness. We were this...

My initial review of Tora-san was already a bit too bloated and unfocused for my standards, but I simply had to rectify my failure to mention the cameo appea...

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Looper is a great science fiction film because it uses time travel as a prop rather than making it the main subjec...

As I stated in my review, One Cut of the Dead is a whole bucket of fun… but it also spoke to me on an extremely personal level. Since it belongs to that rare...

[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS for both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Continue reading at your own risk.] Superhero movies tend...

[SPOILERS for all seasons of Game of Thrones below. You have been warned.] It’s an undeniable fact that Game of Thrones has changed after nearly a decade on ...

In the spirit of constructive criticism, I would like to propose a scenario that would address several of the concerns I raised in my non-review of/rambling ...

I saw Captain Marvel last Saturday, but it’s taken me a few days to completely digest the experience. After much deliberation, I’ve reached the following ver...