Quick, Dirty, and Dismissive Movie Reviews for the New Year

Somehow I have watched a slew of movies that I actually loved (and some that I didn't) in the last month or so that I thought I'd talk about.

Double Feature Series #2: Mob Justice

This is the second post in what I'm calling my Double Feature Series, in which I post a pairing of two movies that I love. These movies will usually be made 20+ years apart and are thematically related somehow. I try to draw out these relations, and in doing so, bring two seemingly disconnected films together, into one thought.

The second entry in this series illustrates the temporal possibilities of influence we see in film! They are two quite harrowing movies about the dangers of mob justice, directed by Fritz Lang and Thomas Vinterberg respectively:

On Vagueness

How do we measure and classify things quantitatively? What is the true difference between a pile, heap, handful, and speck of sand? Are these true distinctions or conventions of language? At what point does one become the other if one grain of sand is being removed? This is a problem one can find in many features of our life and the way we use language. So many of our concepts are loosely defined instances of a qualitative pragmatism designed to enable us to have a coherent conversation without defining our terms every step of the way. To really get to this is a problem I would like to discuss something that gets at this issue of vagueness: sorites paradox.

Double Feature Series #1: Man's Search for Meaning

This is the first post in what I'm calling my Double Feature Series, in which I post a pairing of two movies that I love. These movies will usually be made 20+ years apart and are thematically related somehow. I try to draw out these relations, and in doing so, bring two seemingly disconnected films together, into one thought.