The ramblings of a wannabe cineaste. Join me as I dissect the art of storytelling in films, comics, TV shows, and video games.
O'GRADY FILM

Review: The Little Girl Who Conquered Time
[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] The Little Girl Who Conquered Time (also known as The Girl Who...
Review: I Are You, You Am Me (Exchange Students)
[ The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] Body-swap stories are a dime a dozen in Japanese pop culture...
Review: Presence
Presence is a fascinating formal experiment. Plenty of horror movies utilize camerawork that resembles the gravity-defying movement of a...
Review: The Colors Within
[ The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] Naoko Yamada’s The Colors Within is a work of sublime subtlety. Unlike...
Review: Female Trouble
[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] Obscene. Perverse. Profane. Depraved. Grotesque. These...
Villains That Love Being Bad: Gerald Robotnik, Sonic the Hedgehog 3
[ The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] At first glance, Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s Professor Gerald Robotnik...
Review: The Big Heat
[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] A revolver lies on a cluttered desk. Beside it: a police badge...
Review: Medea (1969)
[ The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] There is a centaur in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea . Not a literal...
My Top 5 Movie Memories of 2024
Ran out of time to prepare a proper New Years Eve post (having way too much fun visiting with my family), but I wanted to commemorate the...
Review: Nosferatu (2024)
[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] Stylistically, Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu resembles one...
Review: Queer
[ The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] There is a scene relatively early in Queer’s sprawling narrative that...
Review: The Crimson Kimono
[ The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] At first glance, The Crimson Kimono appears to be a rather...
Review: The Assassin
[ The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] While The Assassin is often classified as a wuxia film, it is...
Review: A Diary of Chuji’s Travels
Although he is widely regarded as a pioneer of the jidaigeki genre, Daisuke Ito’s directorial efforts remain elusive in the West. Fans...
Review: The Return
[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] As might reasonably be expected of an epic poem based on oral...
Review: Kenki
[ The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] The imagery in Kenji Misumi’s Kenki is reminiscent of haiku :...
Review: The Sniper
[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] Edward Dmytryk’s The Sniper caught me unawares—like a bullet...
Informal Pitch: An Intimate, A24-Style Character Drama Starring an Unlikely Odd Couple
Paul Schrader plays an aging alcoholic slowly drinking himself to death as penance for his former racism, so feeble that he can barely...
The Exorcist III: The Horror of Belief
[ The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] The Exorcist III is, first and foremost, about faith . I don’t...





















