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

Villains That Love Being Bad: Kyubey, Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Can true evil exist in the absence of malice? Can a character really be considered a villain if he is incapable of comprehending morality...
Villains That Love Being Bad: Clarence Boddicker, Robocop
When you get right down to it, the sadistic sociopath (indirectly) responsible for the creation of the metal-headed hero in Paul...
Villains That Love Being Bad: Edward Pierce, The First Great Train Robbery
The dashingly handsome protagonist of Michael Crichton’s 1979 heist movie (played by the always-charismatic Sean Connery) isn’t...
Villains That Love Being Bad: Alex, A Clockwork Orange
Robbery. Rape. Murder. To Alex DeLarge, it all adds up to a day well spent. This common thug with delusions of “culture” loves torturing...
Villains That Love Being Bad: Harry Lime, The Third Man
Played by Orson Welles at his charismatic best, cinema’s most memorable black marketeer manages to charm nearly everyone he...
The Villain Protagonist
When I first learned that a significant number of Shakespeare scholars consider Iago–slimy, scheming, irredeemably evil Iago–the...
Villains That Love Being Bad: Wint and Kidd, Diamonds Are Forever
Of all the henchmen and hired killers buried by suave super-spy James Bond, few are more gleefully sadistic and psychotic than Mister...
Villains That Love Being Bad: Putnam, The Wizard
In terms of storytelling, what really defines a character as a villain? His actions? Well, consider Putnam, who spends the entirety of...
Villains That Love Being Bad: Stuntman Mike, Death Proof
In the process of developing a personality for the charismatic killer in Quentin Tarantino’s throwback to ‘70s low-budget cinema, Kurt...
3 More Villains That Love Being Bad
4. Suganoichi, Blind Menace: Unlike Zatoichi, Shintaro Katsu’s more famous blind masseur, Suganoichi is rotten to the core. As a boy, he...
Top 3 Villains That Love Being Bad
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder if Orion. I’ve watched c-beams glitter in the dark...
The Poetry of Violence: Anatomy of an Action Scene
A good action scene does not exist for its own sake; rather, it is the culmination of the screenwriter’s meticulously-laid groundwork....
The Poetry of Violence: Breaking Rick Grimes
By the end of The Walking Dead’s seventh season premiere, Rick Grimes is a broken man. And it’s his own damn fault. And as I watched the...
The Poetry of Violence: Fruitvale Station
From the opening frame to the end credits, a cloud of impending doom hovers over Fruitvale Station—not only because the visual language...
The Poetry of Violence: Red Dawn (2012)
The remake of Red Dawn truly is a war movie for the Call of Duty generation, too preoccupied with the spectacle of bloodshed to...
The Poetry of Violence: Starship Troopers
Man, woman; white, black, Filipino; farmer, college boy–under the leadership of Earth’s “Federation,” all are finally equal....
The Poetry of Violence: Vendetta of a Samurai
It ends with a tight close-up on the sweat-drenched face of fencing instructor Araki Mataemon (Toshiro Mifune, a far more versatile...
The Poetry of Violence: Elephant
On the morning of April 20, 1999, teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold armed themselves with semi-automatic handguns and improvised...
The Poetry of Violence: Dissecting the Western
In the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of True Grit, corpses litter the (rapidly declining) Old West. They swing from nooses, decay in coffins,...





















