Flasz On Film

I published on this website five hundred times over the course of just under five years. It won’t seem like a lot to anyone who is running a professional outlet or publishes SEO-optimized content for clicks, but for me–that’s a lot. Most of these articles hover around one thousand words. Many exceed this number. It’s a lot of words to type. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the total number of words typed into Flasz on Film rivaled Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in length.

Therefore, I thought it might be a good idea to look back at my output and compose a little list highlighting some of my articles I consider the best, most important or closest to my heart. And let’s be honest: there’s way too many to choose from and it would probably be easy for me to pick a bunch from the recent twelve months, where I think my strongest work is found. To combat this, I thought I’d look back and pick one piece from each year, just to keep it fair and maybe to give you a sense of how my craft may have developed over time. Though, I couldn’t help myself and I ended up adding one more article at the end of the list, as if to prove that I’m not fond of following rules, even the ones I put in place myself.

1. CURSED FILMS: A Review Ten Years in the Making

This was one of the earliest reviews I penned here and it also happens to be important to me, for two reasons. Firstly, it refers to a docu-series Cursed Films (which you can watch on Shudder, if you want; and you should) created and directed by Jay Cheel, who is a founding co-host of the Film Junk Podcast (my favourite movie podcast). This show has been in my life for nearly fifteen years now and I thought that by writing about it I’d tip my hat to Jay, Sean and Frank, whose voices have accompanied me for the best part of my adult life. Secondly, this might be one of the first texts I wrote here that uses the parameters of a review to write about something else that happens to be important to me. (Full text here)

2. Is Paddington a Religious Figure?

Out of everything I wrote in 2021, this was by far the most fun I had with. And this is specifically because it turns out that I find myself in a tiny minority of people who see right through the wholesome gooeyness oozing from the Paddington movies. Which is quite funny because every time I’d voice even a shred of discontent at those films or the character, a bunch of people would unfollow or block me on social media, as though I was blaspheming against their messiah or something. So I sat down and put it into a more or less coherent text that I also think is kind of funny. (Full text here)

3. CHRISTMAS VACATION – My Own Personal Christmas Classic

Choosing this piece over others was quite easy to me because this little review-adjacent rant was probably one of the first texts where I encoded a little bit of my own personal history under the guise of writing about the Griswolds and their dysfunctional family functions. You might call them family dys-functions… I could have easily chosen the piece on the cultural insignificance of Avatar, which I am also particularly fond of, but I decided to stick with what my gut told me I should choose. Thanks to this article, I was able to find the strength to write pieces like “Of Dads and Fathers” and “SHOWING UP and Letting Go,” or even to channel my childhood traumas I had tucked away in the back end of my mind into texts about Speed or True Lies. Writing about Christmas Vacation was what allowed me to find the courage to do so, I believe. (Full text here)

4. How to Rank a Perfect Filmography, or Happy Birthday, Quentin!

2023 was a year when I wrote a lot of pieces I am proud of and choosing one as a highlight of the year was incredibly tough. I could have easily picked the article about The Equalizer being a John Wick movie for dads, the one about my problems with said John Wick movies, the one about The Girlfriend Experience as a conversation on film criticism, Magic Mike movies as indicators of Steven Soderbergh’s career moves, Oppenheimer, Heat or anything Nolan-related I wrote that year, but I settled on the piece I wrote to mark Quentin Tarantino’s birthday. In it I tried to articulate how I rank a filmography of five-star movies and why I love the ones I love as much as I do, using what I thought was a colorful metaphor. (Full text here)

5. Carrie White – An Accidental Icon of American Folklore

I wrote about Carrie on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the original publication of Stephen King’s debut novel. This partly coincided with my embarking on a journey to read and re-read all of King’s works and inspired me to set out on a writing expedition to accompany this endeavour, too. King has been a massive part of my life and has forever remained my favourite living author. Therefore, I found it incredibly enriching to sit down and pen a few thousand words about Carrie, its many adaptations and how this story is placed in the canon of the American popular culture. I honestly think this might be one of the smartest pieces I ever wrote. (Full text here)

6. BLOOD MERIDIAN at 40 and Why Now Is the Time to Adapt the Seemingly Unadaptable

Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is a special book to me for many reasons. Impenetrable, difficult to sit through, repulsive at times, yet somehow elevated, as though it was written by someone propelled by divine inspiration to encapsulate the horror of the American conquest of the West into a nearly biblical format. It turned forty this year and I took it upon myself to synthesize what I think many have failed to identify when it comes to the reasons why it has eluded cinematic adaptation for so long. (Full text here)

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

The Grand Prix! This piece I wrote in 2024 is one I’d like to highlight as an article I’m probably the most proud of and one I see as the most accomplished out of everything I have written thus far. It took me weeks to conceptualize it and days to write (and to betray a secret, spewing two thousand words has become quite a quick affair for me over the years) as it grew from a little article about how Jessica Chastain’s character in Zero Dark Thirty is an avatar for Kathryn Bigelow to become a juggernaut overview of her entire career using her movies as reflections and symbols of her journey. It was probably long enough to look as though it belonged in The New Yorker, though I still think my writing is not on the level where a publication as respected as The New Yorker would give it a chance. So, if you’re going to read just one thing out of this list, it’s this one. (Full text here)