The Zachtastic Movie Blog

(Poster Source: IMDB ) Communication is the art form which God has allotted us for the purpose of connecting, understanding, and expressing. These three things, among other unnamed actions, lead one to a greater appreciation for others and the world around them. Like the life-sustaining substance that is water, it can also hold the capacity to destroy people; even so, the potential for goodness and positivity is great when one can fully utilize their skills of interaction. Some people are better at various forms of communication than others. For me, sometimes I struggle with maintaining a long conversation or looking someone directly in the eye — traits my mission companions occasionally felt compelled, but were totally justified, to point out — yet, the Lord has blessed me with the ability to form sentences and paragraphs into ideas on a page (or screen, in this case). Joy and fulfillment have come my way as I’ve discovered my talents at expressing myself through words s...

One thing that I appreciate about getting to do my Movie Battles series is that it occasionally gives me an opportunity to catch up with some quality films. Krisha and the John Wick films were some examples of great Movie Battle discoveries, and I was also hoping to have another such experience going into this particular edition. You see, with the release of Luc Besson’s film adaptation of Valérian and Laureline — a 50-year-old French comic book series that partially inspired Star Wars — I wanted to look back at the French filmmaker's past forays into science fiction. His cult classic The Fifth Element has been a blind spot for me up until a few days ago, and since that film was supposedly also inspired by the aforementioned comic books, I figured that comparing it with Besson’s latest Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets would make for a perfect match. (Photo Source: IMDB ) However, I am well aware of the large community of film fans who love The Fifth Eleme...

(Poster Source: IMDB) A couple of days ago, I claimed to be have learned my lesson about heaping praise upon a movie soon after its release. I may have enjoyed Baby Driver quite a bit, but my insane levels of hype and fanboyish glee likely caused me to think it was better than what it actually is. Nobody is perfect in this regard, but as a film critic, my quick and stubborn reaction to my experience with that movie was rather premature — meaning that I did not give my brain enough time to simmer over things that didn’t work for me. Having learned this lesson about allowing my mind to collect its thoughts, I now turn to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk . To provide some context on my anticipation for this film, Christopher Nolan is already one of my favorite working filmmakers, if not my absolute favorite. I consider three of his films — Memento , The Dark Knight , and Inception — to be masterpieces, while I also love (or at least like ) all of his other films. I’m trying not to...

There is one trait that I imagine every man shares: an unwillingness to admit when he is wrong. When a man is a film critic, that temptation to withhold weakness is stronger. What happens when a film critic confesses that he allowed his immense anticipation for a film cloud his judgment towards it? What if there were objective flaws that he overlooked or, perhaps in a worse fashion, just straight up ignored because he was in denial? Given the preamble, you may be getting a sense of where I’m going with this. For anyone who has followed my blog for the past few months, it’s no secret that I was very excited for Edgar Wright’s new film Baby Driver — a bold, intriguing new take on the crime thriller genre that promised to seamlessly blend a killer soundtrack with intense action scenes. Upon reviewing it a mere day after I saw the movie, I gave the film a perfect score. Much of this had to do with the fact that I had a blast watching it with my wife and in-laws, and I also fel...