We’re all heartbroken that Tony Stella is gone, and so grateful for all he contributed to BWDR over the years. Here’s our loving appreciation of Tony and his art from editor-in-chief @chadperman.bsky.social

Do you like your Kill Bill's seperately or together? @brendanhodges.bsky.social  and @oneblakeminute.bsky.social  discuss on #OneHotTake. #BangBang

just watched the devastating 2026 film about two close artistic collaborators chasing musical fame and whose friendship falls to pieces and that pain turns dangerous and paranormal as they try and repair it but enough about NIRVANNA: THE BAND - THE SHOW - THE MOVIE

walking out of MOTHER MARY I saw two young teen girls sitting next to the dad they clearly dragged to the movie and he was standing up in utter disbelief at what he’d just seen. I was once those teens and that dad was once my parents and I think that’s lovely

"TENET is the ultimate expression of Christopher Nolan’s decades-spanning project of capturing subjectivity on screen, conjuring a twilight world where the nature of reality, God, time, right and wrong, and free will, are left in the trenches of ambiguity." - @brendanhodges.bsky.social

finally watched HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and loved it. a gothic horror where Eastwood uses his iconic status to subvert the classic western in the most morally scathing terms. how often can you say you saw something truly unlike anything else? a dark, strange and special movie

the Nine Inch Noize disc is incredible and I can't get over how the boys turned songs written over 30 years into a cohesive, brilliant album. if this was your first NIN, you'd just think this is their sound. it's a real achievement in sounding classic and contemporary all at once

have many thoughts on THE PITT finale but for now I'll just say Robby's arc this season was devastating and beautiful and real and Noah Wyle gave one of the best dramatic performances of the last several years. not everything this season was perfect, but that pretty much was

considering how much marketing feels desperate these days, it’s awesome Nolan keeps holding back 99% of the epic footage from trailers, the prologue, and marketing events for THE ODYSSEY. he knows what he has

the photos NASA is releasing of the moon mission are really incredible

the most annoying thing about tickets going on sale 6-12 months in advance is how insanely effective it is –– tickets sell out in seconds, people angrily post how they are they didn't score any tickets, and all it does is built more scarcity and hype around the release

watched A HIDDEN LIFE for Easter and man, the film's unwavering rejection of complicity while asking hard questions about faith, suffering and moral obligation hits incredibly hard given everything that's been happening in the U.S. in the last 12 months. one of Malick's best

Happy Trans Day of Visibility! We've just unlocked our Trans Cinema issue from 2023, guest edited by poet Spencer Williams. It is now (and forever!) entirely free.

pretty disheartening quote considering PROJECT HAIL MARY is a lot like an episode of STAR TREK; it's a first contact story about mutual cooperation, where friendship transcends linguistic and cultural barriers. which yeah, absolutely makes it "political" and about social issues

this season of THE PITT started a bit slow but it's been incredibly effective watching everyone's slow descent to despair, climaxing into everyone telling Robbie he's acting like a fucking lunatic while Dana calls him out after what seems to be one of the worst days of her life

I cannot express how sick I am of franchise nostalgia slop becoming the dominant cultural product of our time

I wrote about Best Picture winner ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, and how Anderson allegorizes revolution as a dad's confessional on time, parenting, and trying to support your kids to save a world you couldn't: nextbestpicture.com/in-one-battl...

finally saw LE BONHEUR and loved it, Varda's rictus portrait of doomed domesticity and solipsistic male violence; it reminded me of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK in how it corrupts picture-perfect spaces through haunting absences. one of the most upsetting endings I've ever seen

I wrote about THE SECRET AGENT for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, a hauntological thriller that shows how memory itself can be an act of resistance, doubling as a shield against regimes that seek to silence the future of their enemies: nextbestpicture.com/how-the-secr...

I wrote about THE SECRET AGENT for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, a hauntological thriller that shows how memory itself can be an act of resistance, doubling as a shield against regimes that seek to silence the future of their enemies: nextbestpicture.com/how-the-secr...

I wrote 6,000 words on AVATAR for @brightwalldarkroom.com, diving into how James Cameron's stereoscopic dreamland is a conduit for a radical, transportive empathy that harkens back to the origins of cinema itself: www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2026/03/02/d...

New on the site! Our Best of 2025 issue continues, with @brendanhodges.bsky.social on AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH (🎨 by @mosesleeart.bsky.social)

A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS was a near perfect season of tv

one thing about THE PITT I’m always impressed by is how effectively they narrow in on entire character dynamics between staff (Robby and Langdon this episode) through one or two perfectly designed pieces of dialogue that crystallize those arcs amidst the chaos of the E.R.

finally caught up with NO OTHER CHOICE and there's nearly nobody better at digital cinema shenanigans than Park Chan-wook

grateful to all at @brightwalldarkroom.com for letting me tackle an unwieldy idea, this time for their best of 2025: on the money, music, capitalist critique, & doubles in SINNERS, and how I'd take this movie's explicit engagement with history over SIRÂT. www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2026/02/17/m...

that episode of Dunk and Egg captured the dirty chaos of medieval combat better than anything I’ve seen since THE LAST DUEL. it maybe overdid the stylistic tricks a bit but that was as visceral, grueling, clumsy, and haphazardly deadly as it needed to be in the best possible way

for @letterboxd.social's list of underseen romances, I wrote about Lubitsch's TROUBLE IN PARADISE, a flirty caper about lustful thieves:

I love how A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS starts out as one kind of show –– a knight tries to join a tournament –– and you think you know what kind of show it is, only to become a more politically complex, grander show before you quite realize it's happening. it's perfect

I've been doing LORD OF THE RINGS at home and it's surreal to watch what helped create your childhood as an adult and discover they impact you the same if not more; the particular blend of deep nostalgia and refreshed awe is a unique kind of emotional in a way nothing else can be

The incredible mind of @brendanhodges.bsky.social and I go deep on Tarantino’s mean and violent mirror to the America of the past and the now - THE HATEFUL EIGHT on the 2015 #DecadeProject on @ohmpods.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/4mG9...

I've been frustrated how much media overcomplicates itself lately, trying to be meaningful by length or contrived importance. So trust when I say A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS is one of the most enjoyable things I've seen in ages, a show elegant in its simplicity. it's wonderful

Big news! WHO KILLED SARAH SHAW is now available at Barnes & Noble stores nationwide! Thanks to everyone for their continued support on this book. It means the world to me.

for @letterboxd.social, I wrote about Edward Yang's century-defining masterwork YI YI, a compassionate city symphony that shows us who we really are: letterboxd.com/journal/yi-y...

I wrote about the overstuffed endings of 2025 for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, and how STRANGER THINGS, THE FINAL RECKONING and AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH struggled to balance their excesses with streamlined storytelling: nextbestpicture.com/closing-time...

I do have my fun calling it “Woke General” but I’ve also watched the first season in full five times bc even when characters are just straight reciting stats about unvaxxed mortality or nursing shortages they do so because they’re begging someone to care textually as much as extratextually

It's striking that progressives like Tim Walz and Zohran Mamdani evoke the middle American attitude that, "Yes, we can fix these social problems because we're Americans and it's the right thing to do!" While the "America first" right only emulates failed and failing nation-states elsewhere.

happy new year!

I'm late to this but JAY KELLY is as clear a case I've seen of a movie having gorgeous visuals that are completely wrong for the movie; the richly saturated, black-crushed filmic style don't support really it as a satirical physical comedy or as an elegiac rumination on life.

this season of STRANGER THINGS is frustrating because the bandwagoned hate is ridiculously hyperbolic but it's still flawed enough –– IE, a redundant pattern of bad plans, poor dialogue, heart to hearts, and so-so action –– it's not worth defending what it does well either

if you're wondering what the "huge leap" from FIRE AND ASH to AVATAR 4 might be, it's probably important to remember the six year time jump is coincidentally around the same time it takes to travel between Earth and Pandora. I'd bet money Na'Vi make it to Earth in the next movie.

PLURIBUS is an exceptionally well-planned season of tv –– it's sneaky but potent storytelling that Gilligan traps Carol in the same escapist wish-fulfillment cycle as the fiction she writes, turning her superiority complex about the people who read her fiction against her.

I wrote about Josh O'Connor in WAKE UP DEAD MAN as one of @ebertvoices.bsky.social's best performances of 2025, and how his anguished priest –– young, dumb and full of *Christ –– is one of the most resonant depictions of spiritual struggle in years: www.rogerebert.com/features/the...

*SPOILERS FOR FIRE AND ASH* If you wondered why the Ash take a backseat in the climax, Jake initially armed Na'vi with guns. Cameron realized that was morally iffy, so he reworked the battle. he didn't want to show armed Na'vi wiping each other out www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture...

THE ODYSSEY looks stunning and this will do a good job setting expectation it’s a fantasy film and not a historical epic, but I’m impressed how much Nolan is holding back — this is almost a teaser. It’s a flex he knows we’ll be there off name and the strength of these shots alone

FIRE AND ASH plays so much better on a second watch it’s almost a different movie; the messiness turns to coherence, the pacing smooths out, and arcs that felt a bit scattered (like Lo’ak’s) suddenly clarify. It’s as dense, rich and wild as any movie Cameron’s made. A major work.

for AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH, I ranked James Cameron's filmography for @NextBestPicture. Yes, AVATAR is very high. Would you expect anything less? I love (basically) all of these movies: nextbestpicture.com/ranking-the-...

when the AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY trailer played there wasn’t a single clap in the entire sold out IMAX theater, just total silence. when the prologue for THE ODYSSEY played, everyone was audibly locked in, and cheered and clapped the second it ended. That’s the movies right there

I wrote about THE FORCE AWAKENS for its 10th anniversary over at @inverse.com (man, time flies), remembering when Star Wars still felt special and how J.J. Abrams' franchise revival has always been more subversive and thoughtful than given credit for: www.inverse.com/entertainmen...

this goes hard and I'd bet money THE ODYSSEY marketing team is foregrounding this guy with a huge helmet and a decorative hair clip made of a golden spine to emphasize an intentional lack of historical realism