Frayed Branches

  Blue Ruin : Hesitant Revenge Revenge stories typically follow similar patterns: A character is wronged and so, in order to set things right in the world, they go after the people who have destroyed their lives in order to set the world right. One of the more popularized franchises involving this as of now is John Wick , a film series in which Keanu Reeves’ titular character shoots his way through hordes of goons after they steal the only happiness he has left in the world. Films like this showcase the character taking up the mantle of vengeance as almost graceful killing machines, quick-witted and well-trained enough to think on their feet while expertly defeating their foes. That spark of satisfaction resonates with the viewer as the watch the seasoned hero take down villain after villain on their quest for a better tomorrow. To some degree, films like these rely on everyman tropes in order to put their viewers in the shoes of the protagonist, feeding into their exhilaration as ...

The Bourne Supremacy : Chasing Your Shadow Not all thriller novels are created equal. For a long time, there has been an over-saturation of media that relies on secret agents and government conspiracies in order to tell their stories. What makes different characters such as Jack Ryan, Jack Reacher, and Jane Hawk are that each notable character has their own spin on the thriller protagonist archetype. But one of the more outstanding characters in all of thriller literature is Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne. In the first entry to Ludlum’s Bourne trilogy, the titular character was fished out of the Mediterranean Sea with no memory of his past life, including his name. Eventually, Bourne discovered his connection to conspiracy-like US-based operations, a whole story that I won’t spoil the ending to here. However, I do wish to warn readers of this blog now: In order to discuss the events of The Bourne Supremacy , there will be spoilers for the first novel in the series, The Bourne Identity . ...

Dead Poets Society : A Coming-of-Age Story There isn’t anything new about coming-of-age stories, many of which follow a similar structure as their predecessors and successors. In a chaste, oftentimes strict world, a character or set of characters is forced to undergo trials and tribulations in order to find themselves, oftentimes clashing with the world around them in order to discover and carve out a unique place in life. Depending on the execution, a film or other piece of media can succeed or fail in showcasing how one’s environment and the people around them can impact how one comes of age. One film that does this exceptionally well, however, is Paul Weir’s 1989 drama Dead Poets Society. The film follows a group of boys at an elite prep school. The two protagonists, the reclusive Todd Anderson and the more outgoing, often rebellious Neil Perry, act as contrasts to one another in order to reflect how life at the boarding school impacts both of them. While Todd is more adamant about ...

Tuning in to Channel Zero: Candle Cove But first, a short history lesson. In the early days of the Internet, people would often send out spam emails that claimed good or bad tidings would come depending on if people sent the email to others or not. For instance, you could have gotten an email in your inbox that read, “Send this email to 10 other people for good luck this week! But if you don’t send it to anyone, prepare for bad luck all year!” This would, in turn, prompt people to send it to others in order to avoid the dreaded “bad luck” showing up in their email. It was less about belief, however, and more about abiding by the cultural standards of emails and Internet posts like that back then. Given the rampant copying of these kinds of emails as they got around to different people’s mailboxes, people began referring to them in different ways. However, the term “copypasta” became one of the more recognizable ones, in reference to how one would have to “copy and paste” these emails i...

The Atmosphere of Creep Horror films really only need to do one thing in order to succeed (on top of having a quality story and characters, of course): Scare people. If a horror film can’t be frightening or invoke feelings of terror when being viewed, then there is little credence to refer to it as “horror.” “Thriller” or “supernatural mystery” would be more appropriate terms. Real, true horror is the kind that sticks in your mind even after you’ve put down the book or turned off the screen. Horror is something that has to be earned by a piece of media, a feeling that is invoked in the person participating on the other end of the story. And one film that manages to capture those feelings of terror and kept with me well after I was done watching it was Patrick Brice’s 2014 found footage film Creep. Creep follows a freelance videographer, Aaron, who has been hired by a new client, Josef, who is in the last days of his life due to a brain tumor. Josef hires Aaron in order to document his ...

Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story   The stories that survive are the ones that define history. No truer does this ring than with the countless stories of Holocaust survivors that have been told in the decades since World War II. These testimonies are important, as they signify the darkest time in modern human history, a grim reminder of what evils humanity is capable of. The tale told in Alan Gratz’s Young Adult novel Prisoner B-3087 is one of these stories. Prisoner B-3087 uses the Holocaust survival story of Jack Gruener in order to showcase the horrors of the Holocaust in such a way that the target demographic of the book—middle and high schoolers—will understand the terror surrounding this point in history.   Called by his Polish name, Yanek, the novel follows Jack’s story from the time the war began when he was ten to his survival of the concentration camps at sixteen. The book chronicles the fall of his home in Kraków, Poland, Yanek’s separatio...

Movie “Monday”: Paris, Texas   Sometimes, a film doesn’t need to be about more than its characters to tell a story and send a message to its audience. The strength of a film that utilizes the subtle characterization of its leading cast is that it is able to develop them in such a way that the story flows well and keeps an audience engaged, no matter the speed of the story or what transpires. A film that manages to capture this with near perfection is the 1984 film Paris, Texas . A slow-moving road movie directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, the film stars Harry Dean Stanton as Travis Henderson, a man who loses consciousness in a building and is taken in by a German doctor. Very soon, it becomes clear that Travis’ situation is not all it seems: Upon the arrival of his brother, Walt, it is revealed Travis has been missing for four years and, in that time, Walt has been taking care of his son, Hunter. As Walt does his best to try and accommodate for Travis’ return to the real worl...