Flasz On Film

The end of the year is now well in sight and so is this Year in Review series. On this occasion, I decided to dig out a small selection of articles that I wrote in 2025 that for one reason or another didn’t get clicked on a lot. And I feel that the five pieces I chose deserve a second chance, if only because I cared about writing them.

Auto-Catalyzed Perpetuation of Poor Radio Discipline

I sometimes wonder if I don’t shoot myself in the foot with the way I choose to title my articles. Maybe I need to go for a more clickbaity approach to this process, but at the same time I utterly detest it when I encounter such content. Therefore, I will refuse to become a part of the problem here, even though it might hinder engagement with some of the articles I have had the most fun writing. Like my older piece where I lamented the fact that my wife snored and where I used the word “stertorous” in the title knowing full well that most casual readers would be unlikely to know what it means. Nevertheless, I found it phenomenally engaging to write about how the use of the phrase “over and out” is both factually incorrect and circumstantially correct in some contexts. I hope you enjoy it too. (Full article here)

Michael Crichton and the Franchise that Cloned Itself to Death

In a year that saw a brand new addition to the Jurassic Park franchise, I spent a lot of time thinking about Michael Crichton’s work and how a little seed of an idea for a techno-thriller about the dangers of genetic engineering took a life of its own. I found it fascinating, and still do, that the franchise that began in 1993 with a movie that briefly became the biggest box office hit of all time grew enough legs to sustain itself for over three decades, especially because the entire modus operandi of the franchise, a with a few notable exceptions, relied on finding new reasons to send characters back to Costa Rica. Alas, it turned out that what I wrote didn’t click with the readership out there despite the fact I found this article quite cool. (Full article here)

A Half-Hearted Defence of Spike Lee’s OLDBOY

I have carried this little article in my back pocket for over a year, specifically since the time I spent over two hours discussing it with Randy on the show. The general strategy behind mounting a defence of a movie that is otherwise incredibly easy to take down relied on positioning it as a protoplast of John Wick and a movie set in a universe more akin to ones found in comic book movies, rather than in a reality adjacent to our own. I thought it was a good idea to finally sit down and write this article at the time when Spike Lee’s newest movie Highest 2 Lowest was still in conversation, but alas, the article did not connect. Or maybe like many other articles I have written over the years, it needs a few years to be discovered. (Full article here)

Is Reading Really Dying, or Is It Our Free Time That’s Going Extinct?

In 2025 I have decided to widen my operations slightly, partly thanks to a permission I extracted from Nora Ephron’s writing, in an effort to challenge myself a little bit and have some fun commenting on wider cultural issues that are not necessarily related to movies. Thus, I found myself contemplating the recently hot topic of humanity’s post-literate future and thought I might have something to add to the pot. I suppose my inner humanist took over for a few moments as I was processing this idea that writing might not necessarily be in such a stark decline after all. I’m pretty sure I’ve touched on something there and maybe there’s a discussion to be had about how my take fits in the grand scheme of things, but for that I think I would need more people to engage with my work. (Full article here)

THE LIFE OF CHUCK, Dangerously Earnest Puzzles and Getting Busy Living

I have already highlighted this piece in a different context, as The Life of Chuck was my favourite movie of the year, but I think I’d like to give my article on the subject of this movie a bit more time in the sunlight. Over the course of the last two years I have been slowly progressing through Stephen King’s bibliography and hence I have written a whole bunch of articles discussing the interface between King’s writing and their cinematic adaptations. And even though I would have had to wait a while before getting to The Life of Chuck if I had stuck to strict chronology of publication, I decided to pounce on this idea because the movie was out in cinemas. In many ways, this story was what I needed to see this year and I think I poured a little bit more of myself into the writing process than I typically would have, so I’d like to give this little essay on how King needs you to rid yourself of cynicism to engage with the story and how it functions as a whimsical fairy tale about self-actualization and purpose another chance to live in the choppy waters of online engagement. (Full article here)