One of my favourite things to do is listen to music with friends. In a car, hanging out on their couch, or just working together with some songs on. There’s a communality to the act of sharing favourite songs, or listening to albums for the first time together. This is one of the things stripped away by the ongoing pandemic that has really gotten to me. I just miss listening to music with people. …

You might be wondering: Jon, what are you doing? Isn’t this a two-year old documentary/art installation that came and went? What are you doing writing a blog piece about it now, when it’s not relevant anymore?

Well, dear reader, let me tell you why. I’m stuck at home in the midst of what is going to be another lockdown, working a job where it’s dark outside by the time I finish, and I need something to direct my frustration at!

Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is a 2018 Canadian documentary and third collaboration between filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and…

After months of closures, I returned to work at a local movie theatre where we waited through third-run classics, recent-releases, and enhanced cleaning protocols for the eventual, delay-wracked arrival of the first blockbuster in the new pandemic world, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. After two weeks enduring the structural trembles brought about as a result of the film’s thunderous volume, the staff pass-restriction finally lifted. I went to see Tenet with my sister in the local IMAX theatre, earplugs in hand to prevent permanent hearing loss. We sat back, in our socially-distanced auditorium with five other audience members, to enjoy the new…

J.K. Rowling, continuing a pattern of behaviour that only becomes more obvious in retrospect, once again showed her horrible transphobia to the world when she remarked upon the phrase “people who menstruate”, and fear-mongering against the Trans community, challenging the notion of inclusion for those who do not subscribe to the gender binary structure Rowling and many other transphobes find faith in. I am not here to litigate this specific issue, because all I can do is amplify the voices of the Trans communities who are the most impacted by someone with such power attacking them. Trans Lives Matter, and…

I love The 1975, they’re my favourite band, and I was eagerly awaiting Notes on a Conditional Form, the group’s fourth studio album release. If any mainstream band nowadays embodies the concept of cinematic music, it’s The 1975; with sweeping choruses and massive variation in production, they’re a group that continues to evolve and change. If A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, the band’s previous album and the first of the two in the Music For Cars era, proved anything, it’s that the band is able to evolve their sound while exploring a more conceptual path forward.

After an eight-month…

When people talk about Spike Jonze, what do they normally talk about? They talk about films such as Her, and Being John Malkovich. People talk about his fantastic music videos, and the way he innovated the medium in the 1990s and 2000s. Where the Wild Things Are is often ignored, and acknowledged as merely a footnote in Jonze’s filmography. A long-gestating project, Where the Wild Things Are released at the tail-end of 2009 to mostly-positive reviews, while being a box office disappointment for Warner Bros. …

A Ghost Story is a 2017 film directed by David Lowery that follows a man (Casey Affleck) who, while living in a new home with his significant other (Rooney Mara), tragically dies in a car accident. He awakens as a ghost, visualized as him covered in a bedsheet with the eyes cut out. The visual, coupled with the 4:3 vignetted aspect ratio creates a feeling of nostalgia, of memories buried deep within our subconscious. It calls to mind Charlie Brown, and the feeling of childlike innocence.

A Ghost Story explores themes of death, life, regret, time, in a way you…

I watched Lee Chang-dong’s 2018 film Burning for the first time a few days ago, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since. The themes, characters and, most importantly, the feeling of the film have latched into my mind the way the best pieces of cinema do.

I don’t really want to get into the content of the film, as I believe it’s something you need to experience for yourself. What I want to do, instead, is use Burning as a conduit to explore the idea of ambiguity in film. Key to the film’s success…