Flasz On Film

I have shared the five pieces I wrote that ended up being clicked on the most as part of my 2024 in Review series, and fortunately this list did include at least one piece (the one about Carrie White). However, I’d like to single out a few more articles I felt particularly good about.

1. JAWS Was Not a Pandemic Movie

Throughout the early months of the COVID pandemic a bunch of pieces sprouted in the web and suggested that Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (one of my all-time favourite films) was a pandemic text. Having reflected on this for a while I wrote a few words myself in an attempt to contextualize this claim and maybe add a few bits of nuance to the positioning of Jaws as a cultural item at the inflection point in the evolution of The New Hollywood and an iteration of a disaster film genre. (Full Article Here)

2. ROLLING THUNDER and Getting Your Gear as an Act of Self-Healing

Male mental health is an important subject to me and I have been consistently returning to its portrayal in movies (Fight Club, Rocky, First Blood to name but a few). I was quite proud of my little essay that sprouted out of analysis of a simple throwaway scene in Rolling Thunder and ended up opening up an entire conversation about emotional states in men, the difference between talking about emotions and expressing them, as well as the simple yet often overlooked aspect of male mental wellbeing which stipulates that men get better when they find a mission or a project as opposed to when they are asked to simply talk about how they feel. (Full Article Here)

3. Dinosaur Bucket Lists and the Beginning of the End of Cinema

I sometimes think about how many of my favourite filmmakers will likely die in the next few years and that somehow an entire era in cinema will come crashing down. Therefore, I wrote a little summary of how I feel about these changing times, the impending end of auteur cinema and how there might never be The New Hollywood Mark 2 (or maybe there might be one, who knows?) to replace the current franchise-led zeitgeist. (Full Article Here)

4. CABARET, Faragist Riots and Historical Rhyming Patterns

Cabaret wasn’t celebrating any “round” anniversary, but then again I don’t need an excuse to write about a movie if I feel like doing so. Following the widespread race riots that swept the UK in the summer of 2024, I felt the commentary left behind in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret was something worth bringing to the fore because the world might very well be on a trajectory to rhyme with some elements of our recent history that are best left untouched. (Full Article Here)

5. AIRPORT 1975, These Magnificent Charltons, and Their Flying Studios

In February we spent the entire month over at Uncut Gems Podcast discussing disaster movies from the 70s and as a result of these conversations I ended up conceptualizing what I think is my best metaphorical take on a movie in a long while. I wrote about how Airport 1975 functions as an allegorical representation of how the studio system felt unable to respond to the changing times because big studios are like massive airliners incapable of making sudden turns, while independent filmmakers are like small agile aeroplanes. (Full Article Here)

6. THE CROW at 30: an Enduring Goth Fairy Tale, an Evolutionary Lynchpin, and a Dark Memento

I waited a few months from the actual 30th anniversary of the release of The Crow to write about it on what I think is a more poignant date, the eve of Hallow’s Eve aka The Devil’s Night. This movie holds a particular place in my heart as it is equally a nostalgic piece taking me back to my youth and it also happens to be the last movie Brandon Lee ever made. Therefore, I sat down to outline exactly why I think this movie is so special and why it is an evolutionary progenitor of the action cinema of the 90s and the 2000s because without Eric Draven it’s hard to conceptualize what Neo from The Matrix would look like. (Full Article Here)

7. SPEED and Auto-Therapeutic Nostalgia for Mid-90s Awesomeness

Speed also turned thirty this year and I wanted to write a few things about it. However, I ended up rewatching it in an act of self-care and consequently, instead of penning a structurally and conceptually cohesive essay on the lasting legacy of this movie, I ended up writing what I can only describe as a stream of consciousness harking back to some of my own memories of my youth, with its soft and warm pockets of nostalgia and dark passages full of demons now kept in their closets. (Full Article Here)

8. TRUE LIES – A Perfect Vicarious Fantasy for Daydreaming Dads

Another movie on its 30th anniversary, James Cameron’s True Lies, happens to be one of my all-time favourite movies and also one of my go-to comfort films as well. Therefore, I thought I’d write a few things about how iconic and culturally important this movie might be to people in the right age bracket as it works as an I-can-be-Bond-too fantasy for dads who dream about being appreciated by their families. (Full Article Here)

9. Of Dads and Fathers

For Fathers Day this year I sat down to write what might be the most personal piece of writing I have ever produced. I can only tell you to go and read it if you’d like to find out a little bit more about me and things I hold as important in my life. I wrote about growing up with male role models I found on the screen and how they contrasted with role models I had at home. This is something I felt I needed to do even though it was quite hard to put it on the page. (Full Article Here)

10. Between NEAR DARK and ZERO DARK THIRTY: A Tale of Four Bigelows and One Relentless Pursuit of Greatness

If there’s but one article of mine I’d like you to read, it’s this one. Over the course of the year I delved deep into the cinema of Kathryn Bigelow and found incredible kinship with this filmmaker whose entire career progression has been an uphill struggle to prove her worth to the immobile monolith of the Hollywood studio system. I’ve been toying with writing something about Bigelow’s work and how some of her movies seem to metaphorically map onto her life as well and then I realized that they all do. So I penned what I think is the longest piece of writing I completed on the subject of film ever. It took a while to put it together and it likely takes a while to read, but I am immensely proud of this article where I poured all my love for Bigelow’s work and what I hope is some inspired commentary on how even some of her least successful movies are not only worth watching but also warrant a conversation. (Full Article Here)

There you have it. These are the ten pieces I think I’d like to hold up as my 2024 portfolio and a good selection of my entire output of this year. I hope you enjoy reading them at least as much as I enjoyed writing them