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 - National Theatre Live: Frankenstein
Can you believe that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus recently celebrated its 200th birthday? To commemorate the...
Review: Shoplifters
Returned to IFC Center to catch a screening of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters. Like After the Storm, this Palme d’Or winning masterpiece...
Review: Locke
Watched Locke on Kanopy. It takes an immense ego to say “Let’s make a movie in which the protagonist never leaves his car and only...
My 3 Favorite Unconventionally-Structured Movies
A story’s success depends powerfully upon how the writer chooses to tell it. Good writers understand and respect the beauty of minimalism...
Review: Who's That Knocking at My Door
Caught a midnight screening of Martin Scorsese’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door at IFC Center. It’s been years since I first saw it (home...
Review: The Wolf of Wall Street
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Martin Scorsese is the most religious—or, at the very least, the most spiritual—filmmaker...
Review: Boxcar Bertha
Hit IFC Center for a midnight screening of Boxcar Bertha, one of the few remaining Scorsese films I hadn’t seen yet. This variation on...
Taxi Driver: A Walking Contradiction
“You know what you remind me of? That song by... Kris Kristofferson.” Betsy pauses, searching her memory for the lyrics. “He’s a… he’s a...
Review: Silence
Last night, I finally got to see Martin Scorsese’s long overdue adaptation of Silence—though it’s hard to say whether or not I enjoyed...
Travis (V.O.)
I tried several times to call her, but after the first call, she wouldn’t come to the phone any longer. I also sent flowers but with no...
Taxi Driver: The Wounded Vet
It’s easy to read Taxi Driver as a “coming home” narrative. Viewed through this lens, Travis Bickle’s enigmatic actions and ambiguous...
In the Shadow of Taxi Driver: Light Sleeper
After Martin Scorsese transformed his superb screenplay for Taxi Driver into an even better motion picture—one of the most hypnotically...
Taxi Driver: In The Shadow of The Searchers?
In one of his more in-depth analyses of Taxi Driver, Roger Ebert writes, It is a widely known item of cinematic lore that Paul Schrader’s...
In the Shadow of Taxi Driver: Bringing Out the Dead
Wide, tortured eyes dart wildly from side-to-side, bathed in the disorienting flash of multicolored lights. Sound familiar? Well, these...
The Subjective Realities of Martin Scorsese
Travis Bickle inhabits a Hell on Earth. His taxi cab is a sanctuary from the smoke-belching, neon-drenched, garbage-strewn streets of New...
The Magic of Hugo
It’s already cliché to call Hugo “Scorsese’s love letter to cinema,” but what else does one call a movie that features Georges Melies,...
The Nature of Evil in Disney's Animated Canon
One of the primary thematic questions driving Disney’s recent animated output has been “Where does evil truly reside?” As in real life,...
Doki Doki Literatue Club! and the Art of Taking Advantage of a Storytelling Medium
In light of the recent controversy surrounding the independently-produced visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club!, I decided to do...
The Art of Heroic Villainy
Unlike some Marvel movie fans, I don’t feel that Thor: The Dark World (2013) is a bad film, necessarily. It does, however, suffer from...



















