Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Brendan Hodges

@brendanhodges.bsky.social

5.3K followers 330 following 500 posts

staff @NextBestPicture, further bylines @BWDR @Ebertvoices @inversedotcom @Polygon @Vaguevisages, guest @BBC. I'm prone to ramble about aspect ratios at parties. Writing: https://brendanhodges.contently.com/ Inquiries: [email protected]

brendanhodges.contently.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Aug 7

🚨new byline 🚨

for @letterboxd.social I went long celebrating King Hu's wuxia masterpiece A TOUCH OF ZEN, his swashbuckling action epic that's also a powerful, transcendent meditation on reality –– and our place in it.

Very proud of this one!

letterboxd.com/journal/a-to...

Stairway to Heaven: the sacred spectacle of A Touch of Zen, 50 years on • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

50 years since A Touch of Zen’s first proper release dazzled viewers, Brendan Hodges reflects on King Hu’s revolutionary wuxia that’s both a swashbuckling adventure and a cosmic meditation on reality—...

letterboxd.com

1 7 20

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 9d

Lockjaw is one of the saddest creations of PTA’s career

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 9d

just saw ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER for a third time last night and it’s actually ridiculous how it only gets better, faster, richer and more emotional with each viewing. think it’s time I finally admitted it’s a masterpiece.

3 1 40

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 13d

More on all this later. The big car chase indeed goes ridiculously hard; those aren’t mountains, they’re waves. As much TERMINATOR 2 as anything from Demme (that too). Chase Infiniti is unbelievable. A great, rousing, if flawed, movie. One of the best of 2025.

1 8

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 13d

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is being hailed as a revolutionary text, but its politics are more complicated and knowingly messy than I think some say, making it a film as confrontational as it is cathartic, its resolutions satisfying and unsatisfying all at once.

2 9

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 13d

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is an exhilarating gauntlet of American psychosexual paranoia and fight, where PTA pivots from years of Bad Dads into musing on a father's place to raise the next generation after his own already failed. A triumph, and an all-timer California movie.

1 2 39

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 18d

Yeah, he’s an extremely cynical guy and I don’t think you need to dig very deep in his work to find the many signals of it. there’s a rather bleak worldview undercutting his more mawkish impulses.

1 1

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 18d

Like minds

1 1

Reposted by Brendan Hodges

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 18d

heard there’s a new @hitfactorypod.bsky.social about Saving Private Ryan in which @brendanhodges.bsky.social mounts a defence along the lines of this thread

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · Oct 28

one day i'll write my big essay defending Saving Private Ryan as a subversive masterpiece about the pointlessness of war, and the violence undergirding the politics of that Norman Rockwell America

1 3 7

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 20d

now seems like a good time to say I just flew to Boston where I’ll be seeing ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER in Vista Vision and dual laser 1.43. getting to the point where the hype feels dangerous.

2 13

Reposted by Brendan Hodges

Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 21d

Re Kimmel, it's important that Disney has left itself an out--it is a "suspension," not a cancellation or firing. What happens in the next two days--reaction within the company but also in the press, in the industry, in Washington, among consumers, and on social media--may affect how this plays out.

370 1.6K 6.8K

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 23d

we'll see how it does at the box office but with ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER apparently being a rousing, action-packed commercial movie, it has to be studied why the studio thought they should market it as a zany slapstick stoner thing instead of a gripping, relevant action-comedy

3 8

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 24d

the fact the DEMON SLAYER
movie is on pace to potentially out-earn FANTASTIC FOUR is as good reflection of the shifting cultural tides in the last ten years as I’ve seen. nobody would’ve thought this was possible not long ago, crazy stuff

I reviewed it for NBP:

nextbestpicture.com/demon-slayer...

"DEMON SLAYER: KIMETSU NO YAIBA - INFINITY CASTLE" - Review

THE STORY – The Demon Slayer Corps are drawn into the Infinity Castle, where Tanjiro, Nezuko, and the Hashira face terrifying Upper Rank demons in a desperate fight as the final battle against Muzan K...

nextbestpicture.com

2 8

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · 26d

I’m watching SAVING PRIVATE RYAN again and knowing Spielberg didn’t shot list the opening 25 minutes and in fact blocked and shot it on the fly is a little like finding out Beethoven made up Symphony No. 3 on the spot

2 1 39

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Aug 27

really enjoying the mad science of ALIEN: EARTH, where corporate overlords use technology to control us (especially children), as Timothy Olyphant does xeno-mischief. It’s also one of the best and most “cinematic” looking shows recently, with actual lenses, grain and halation:

1 4 20

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Aug 14

Depending who you ask WEAPONS is about the weaponization of children, school shootings, the old preying on the young, trauma, or nothing at all.

I wrote about that spin-the-dial discourse and why so many feel it doesn't amount to much:

nextbestpicture.com/weapons-the-...

1 6

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Aug 14

I wrote about Zach Cregger's Rorschacian horror epic WEAPONS for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, unpacking its cauldron of themes, the divided discourse, and what it means to be "about" something:

nextbestpicture.com/weapons-the-...

"Weapons" - The Illusion Of Safety And What It Means To Be About Something

Horror has a long history of confronting us with what we take for granted, revealing the dark truths we keep in the locked basements in the back of our minds. We may not like to think about it, but we...

nextbestpicture.com

1 2 14

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Aug 11

some friends attend annual spiritual retreats to reconnect with our uncertain cosmos. I just see 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY on 70mm at the @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social once a year.

1 1 28

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Aug 7

Stairway to Heaven: the sacred spectacle of A Touch of Zen, 50 years on • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine

letterboxd.com

1 7 20

Reposted by Brendan Hodges

Roxana Hadadi @roxana-hadadi.bsky.social · Aug 7

bumping -- would love it if you gave this one a read

Roxana Hadadi @roxana-hadadi.bsky.social · Aug 6

jonathan demme's THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is a modern american masterpiece, a prescient slice of paranoia and disinformation that understood how much of our political landscape was, & will, be based on lies. honored to write about it for @bwdr.bsky.social.

www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2025/08/06/w...

13 52

Reposted by Brendan Hodges

Bright Wall/Dark Room @bwdr.bsky.social · Jul 29

New today on the site!

“Consider how THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS revolves around vision. Not only perception, but empathy and hindsight, and the non-empirical prick of intuition, where vision exceeds the reach of training.”

- Veronica Fitzpatrick

(art by @bturnerinfo.bsky.social)

Where to Look: The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Consider how The Silence of the Lambs revolves around vision. Not only perception, but empathy and hindsight, and the non-empirical prick of intuition.

www.brightwalldarkroom.com

2 12 78

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Jul 25

1 24

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Jul 25

Very curious how the trailer will play to people who aren't already in the bag for an AVATAR sequel. It doesn't have the hook of a serene and stunning new biome, instead playing off familiar iconography while foregrounding new conflicts (with the Ash People) with grief and hate.

1 5

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Jul 25

I saw the AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH trailer and besides being some of the most beautiful footage I've seen all year, struck by the real sense of doom and rage––fist fights inside of cosmic volcanoes, heroes terrified, huge aerial battles. And I'm pretty sure I know who's going to die.

1 1 18

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Jul 25

recent MCU, especially BRAVE NEW WORLD, THUNDERBOLTS and now FANTASTIC FOUR, try to foreground "realistic" feelings and messier characters with action motivated by feeling more than macguffins and plot. but then Feige sands down the edges to make them as palatable as possible

2 7

Brendan Hodges @brendanhodges.bsky.social · Jul 25

You feel the tension between a more interesting FANTASTIC FOUR –– one about The Thing being a Sad Guy roaming the streets and flirting with a nice lady, and moral and domestic problems are taken seriously –– and a poppy MCU entry. I had fun, but I wish it was allowed to be more.

1 6