Aesthetics

Designing the New Logo for Plot and Theme

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As Plot and Theme will be devoting more time to forms of storytelling other than movies, the need for a fresh logo arose, one that could aptly represent this expanded scope. Simplicity was the guiding principle in designing the logo. A clean, uncluttered design is not only visually appealing but also communicates the core values … Read more

“2001: a Space Odyssey”: The Eye-Opening Beauty of Powerful Cinema

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Introduction It is a sin to write this.  Mr. Stanley Kubrick told me so: 2001 is a nonverbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there are only a little less than 40 minutes of dialog. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the … Read more

The Time Has Come to Make a Choice: The Strong Volition of “The Matrix”

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The Matrix is replete with allusions to classic philosophical ideas.  The plot references Plato’s Cave and the world of forms, Descartes’ First Meditation and the evil demon, and Hilary Putnam’s “brain in a vat” scenario – all ruminations on the nature of reality and the possibility that we only perceive an illusion.  The film also … Read more

Clarice, Meet Dr. Lecter: How to Craft a Masterful Intro Scene

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One of the most enthralling sequences in The Silence of the Lambs is the first meeting between Clarice Starling and Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and it is a masterclass in visual storytelling.  This piece will analyze this entire sequence shot-by-shot,  explaining the cinematic techniques that director Jonathan Demme and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto use to tell this … Read more

Why “The Terminator” (1984) is the Greatest Terminator Film

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The Terminator (1984) is a better film than Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).  The other movies in the franchise are utter garbage and will not be discussed further.  And, if you’ll lower your pitchforks for long enough, this piece will provide several arguments asserting the superiority of The Terminator.  I’ll compare three aspects of the … Read more

“Beauty and the Beast” Pays Homage, but Can’t Compete with Better Films

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When remaking a classic, withstanding the inevitable comparisons requires either flawless execution or inspired novelty.  Disney’s latest live-action adaptation has an even greater challenge, as it must compete with two masterpieces:  the studio’s own animated feature from 1991, and Jean Cocteau’s magnificent romantic fantasy La Belle et la Bête (1946).  And though this iteration of … Read more

Is it Any Good? The Scourge of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic

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You may have noticed that here on Plot and Theme I never attach a grade to my reviews. Distilling an entire film into a single number or letter has always rubbed me the wrong way, as it inherently removes any critical nuance from the discourse. But, I am aware that most reviews do provide a grade in summation, and these can help gauge the overall quality of the film. More recently, with the rise of review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, scores of these reviews are condensed down into a single number. The result is a peculiar derivative of a derivative – thoughts and words transformed into a number, then that number lost in a sea of others. The purpose of this piece is to explain that process in more detail, and ultimately determining if any of these procedures result in answering a simple question: Is <Insert Film > any good?

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The Basics of the Romantic Realism School of Art

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The first aesthetics post on this blog sought to broadly define the philosophical field of aesthetics, tasked with the study of art and its role in human life. In it, I mentioned that there are many different viewpoints and theories in this field, and that I would be approaching the questions of aesthetics from the perspective of a particular school: Romantic Realism. So, with our foundational knowledge of aesthetics taken care of, we are now prepared to delve into this particular school of thought, which will be the focus of this piece.

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The Basics of the Aesthetics of Film and Cinema

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In the mission statement of this blog, I indicated that I would be approaching the field of film criticism from the perspective of a particular school of aesthetics – Romantic Realism. But, in order to establish what is meant by “Romantic Realism”, to explain its principles and apply its methods of analysis, there is a … Read more