Sean Patrick

R.I.P Lynn Shelton and thank you for inspiring this essay.

Back to the Future 3 places me into an odd mindset 30 years later. In its innate nostalgia for the western, Back to the Future 3 took me to a place of examining the things that my father embraced as a young man, the kinds of things I thought that I had rejected in creating a personality separate from my father. In this review/essay, Back to the Future 3 will be the vehicle with which I will examine maturity, childhood, identity and my relationship with my father, abstractly of course, I would need a therapist to tackle the subject directly.

If you thought silly almost parody levels of jingoistic patriotism was just a relic of 1980's action movies, you're not entirely wrong. That said, the genre of fetishistic love for American military might did linger a little ways into the 90's before we all started to fully tire of it. As evidence, here is Fire Birds, a 1990 love letter to American military might that doubles as a right wing thesis statement on how we could have won the war on drugs with super-cool, super-expensive helicopters.

Every day, amid the threat of the virus, I find ways to stay positive and think of the future. That's not easy for those of us with pre-existing lung conditions. I have asthma and I live with the specter of COVID-19 and the damage it does to the ability to breathe. It's terrifying, I have been on a ventilator and I know the horror of not catching your breath.

The new Netflix comedy, The Wrong Missy, stars David Spade and Lauren Lapkus in a romantic comedy about a guy who invites the wrong woman named Missy on a corporate retreat to Hawaii. The film was shot in late 2019 on the Big Isle in Hawaii and well prior to the global pandemic which has made travel to one of the most beloved tourist spots in the world impossible for most.

We are at the beginning of our exploration of film form in the year 2000 and it is likely too early to identify a particular trend, aside from bad movies, lots of bad movies early in this century, I’m looking at you Supernova and Next Friday. But if I were to force the discovery of a theme perhaps one that stands out is fumbling attempts at experimenting with film form. In Next Friday, that meant employing some of the most awkward fourth wall breaking voiceover I think I’ve ever experienced.