Flasz On Film

I think the time has now come to close this sprint of listicles summarizing this year in movies and reflecting on my own output by way of rankings but before I go, I thought I’d highlight a few more pieces I wrote last year in addition to the ones I already did share (here and here). These are articles I was quite happy with that also happen to be ones that have been clicked on and read the least.

1. How George Lucas Ruined Space Operas

To celebrate the completely manufactured holiday of May the 4th I sat down and penned a few words on the aspect of the Star Wars legacy that isn’t talked about at all, which is the in-built expectation for any type of space-bound fantasy to be able to sustain the kind of effortlessly immersive world-building George Lucas singularly engineered when he was putting his work together… but without giving storytellers enough runway to build those worlds organically. (Full Article Here)

2. The Ritual of Podcasting: Two Hundred Weekends of Finding Myself

In this highly introspective piece (and one among the few non-film articles I introduced here last year too) I looked back at my journey as a podcaster. This coincided (or rather was spurred by it) with the fact the Uncut Gems Podcast published its 200th episode in November 2024 and therefore I had a long hard look at how my adventure in front of the microphone began, how it unfolded over the years and where it is now. (Full Article Here)

3. ‘SALEM’S LOT, Vampires Next Door and the Often-Unnoticed Prowess of Stephen King’s World-Building

Over the course of last year I have written a good bunch of articles about Stephen King (which you can find here) and I was particularly proud of my essay about how none of the adaptations of his sophomore novel ‘Salem’s Lot (including the most recent one) articulate what I think is the core of the book’s horror. This novel about Dracula coming to live in your hometown is way deeper and more insidiously terrifying than you can possibly imagine and I hope I could articulate what that is in my little-read essay. (Full Article Here)

4. That Pesky “I” in “Critic”

At some point last year I recall a brief storm online erupted over the place (or lack thereof) of personal voice and perspective in critical writing. As someone who has truly embodied the concept of writing in first person, veering into tangents and embracing a more chaotic stream-of-consciousness kind of interaction with the written word, you might imagine that I had a few things to say on the matter. (Full Article Here)

5. Roland Emmerich’s 2012 Was a Premonition of the Post-Pandemic Bedlam

Having availed myself of a variety of disaster movies, some of which may have spurred me to write about them (here and here), I sat down and penned what I saw as a commentary on how among the many movies (like Jaws and Contagion to name a few) the one that seems to map quite well on how the world responded to the COVID pandemic and where it went afterwards was Roland Emmerich’s 2012. I found it quite fun, as I usually do when I come up with a cool metaphor to wrap a movie into and it saddened me greatly that only a handful of people in the world stumbled upon this little essay. (Full Article Here)

6. DO THE RIGHT THING, Sinister Politics of Division and the Difficulties of Extrapolating from Incomplete Datasets

During the year I have also embarked on a methodical journey through the feature output of one Spike Lee, mostly because we talked about these movies on the podcast. However, as you might expect, a bunch of essays came out of this project (including one about Mo’ Better Blues, and one about Summer of Sam) as I discovered just how intellectually titillating Lee’s cinema was to me and how rich in themes and politically relevant ideas it was too. However, I was the most proud of my essay on Do the Right Thing where – orthogonally to what you’d find in most of the written work commenting on this film – I got intrigued by not what’s on the screen but by what’s not in the film at all. (Full Article Here)

7. On the Underappreciated Effort in Democratizing Film Preservation

For years I have been interested in the many ways in which streaming platforms continue to upset the cultural status quo (see here, here and here for examples), which I all find fascinating and terrifying in equal measures. However, I have also looked a bit deeper into the subject of finding some more forgotten films online (and mostly ones the big players don’t tend to care about at all) and found that somewhere in the dark corners of the Internet, a massive effort in inadvertent film preservation is underway. (Full Article Here)

8. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and Mashed Potato-Shaped Dreams of Hollywood Greatness

This little piece about Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I rewatched for no other reason than to do it because it’s a great movie, ended up almost completely overlooked by my readers. And I truly loved shaping up this concept and thinking about how this movie’s story reflects Spielberg’s own career path and acts as a complementary semi-biographical nugget to The Fabelmans… but not in the way most film fans would know. It is widely accepted that Close Encounters is the most personal film Spielberg directed, but I hope I found a reading in there that is fresh and interesting to read. (Full Article Here)

9. Cultural Tardiness and Manufactured Relevance

I wrote this essay partly in response to what I see as a deluge of engagement farming listicles on the Internet and the socially constructed idea of “the party” which is a timeframe in which it is acceptable to talk about a cultural item. I thought it was fun to cut through the current cultural zeitgeist and challenge a few of those ridiculous norms, but barely anyone read it. So you might as well if you’re here already. (Full Article Here)

10. Inveterate Hairless Anthropoids and Thinking in Decades

I turned forty this year and on the occasion of my birthday I looked back at my life and penned what I hope would be a few words of warmth and support for anyone starting to feel the pressure of their own impending mortality. I’m not sure I can offer more than an invitation to click through and read the piece I wrote, but I will tell you that I ended up coming back to read it a few times since publishing it because it actively helps me realign when anxiety and stress try to get the best of me. It’s one of those essays I feel particularly proud of and it would mean the world to me if more people read it. (Full Article Here)

And there we are – 2025 has just arrived and this series of articles is now officially concluded. I hope you will enjoy the pieces I highlighted and you’d also come back to read more of my work if you like my style. I hope you all have had a great holiday break and wish you all Happy New Year!