I’ve been mulling this over for the last two days and during that time I’ve felt the need to explain what I’m going for in some more detail.

My aim is not to review films in the sense of giving them grades. If you see a movie in here, you can safely assume I’ve liked it enough to think about it (and not only to vent my feelings). These are good movies. Not necessarily masterpieces (well, most of them aren’t), but movies you won’t mind having watched. It wasn’t 90 minutes of boredeom or worse.

Instead I’m trying to analyze the movies in my own way. Why? Actually, as I already mentioned in the previous part, I am not saying I’m correct or I’ve covered some deep secret about these movies. Art doesn’t work that way. Sure, the authors had some intent, but the fact that I’m using a plural here should already tell you quite a bit. The writers, director, producers, financiers, editors, actors and even the marketing will each have their own take. And this is just the conscious intent. Then there’s the unconscious intent as well.

This is all before the movie even goes out. After that, our own experiences and the cultural context will also feed into how we experience movies. I’ll also often read articles or watch video essays on them, which will also shape my view of the movies. In fact, this is what I’m striving to do. I want to be one of those voices. I know I’ll never be Lindsay Ellis or Dan Olsen, but if I’m lucky and keep at it for long enough, maybe I’ll be… well, I don’t want to name anyone, because it would be kind of a back-handed compliment.

What exactly do I wish to achieve? I love how the better critics can make see new perspectives on movies. Let’s say I’ve only sort of enjoyed a movie, but someone who’s opinion I trust says they love it. I want to know why. What is the reason between the discrepancy? Sometimes understanding this won’t affect my opinion that much, but at other times I can find something new in these movies. A perspective I wasn’t able to see myself as we all live in a bubble.

I can’t promise you I’ll come up with anything revolutionary. After all, my bubble is that of an upper-middle class white nomically Christian (atheist, but I was babtized as a child) guy in a quite homogenously white country (actually, this has changed quite a bit during my lifetime – in my childhood immigrants were rare in my hometown, but now there’s people from over hundred countries in a town of some 60 thousand people). I will try though. Hopefully I’ll learn to better at it with time.