Lisa Schwarzbaum

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Lisa Schwarzbaum is a famous American movie critic who wrote criticisms for Entertainment Weekly for about 20 years before her retirement in 2013. She grew up in Queens, New York and started her career in Boston by writing classical music criticism. Magazines she wrote for include Vogue, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times Magazine.

Over the years, she has written numerous criticisms on movies that can still be found online today. Almost 2,000 of her reviews can be found on MetaCritic as well as RottenTomatoes and IMDB. Not to mention that her publications in newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Times are still available for the public.

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The reason why I like Lisa Schwarzbaum as a movie critic is because while she is versatile, we share similar movie tastes. Fantasy movies are typically some of her favorites as they are mine, so we generally agree on if a movie is bad or not. Because of our similarities, I rely on her criticisms to determine whether or not I will see a movie in theaters or wait until it comes out on Netflix.

Lisa Schwarzbaum's writing style is also very admirable and keeps readers interested in what she has to say. Her phrasing and explanations are clear and concise, which I prefer when reading criticisms on anything. All in all, Schwarzbaum is one of my go-to critics because of our similarities and her concise writing style.

They All Float

It seems as though Hollywood loves making remakes of old horror classics. It was only a matter of time before they decided to remake the famous movie It based on Stephen King's novel. The above video is a side-by-side comparison of the 1990 trailer and the 2017 trailer for the movie. 

Right from the beginning, you can see that the remake will try to make the movie much more sinister and nightmarish than the original. This is evident through the colors, music, and modern horror movie feel we get from the trailer. Even the reactions we get from the two Georgies differ and give the impression of a scarier clown in the 2017 remake.

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From the trailer, it seems as though the directors are tweaking Pennywise's personality as well as his appearance. In addition to an overall creepier appearance, the new Pennywise seems to be based more on a monster that looks like a clown rather than a clown that is a monster.

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After watching the original It and doing research on the remake, I've become more excited to see how closely the directors decide to stick to the original movie and plot. I hope that this remake will not try to incorporate too many modern horror movie cliches and focuses more on making the original more realistic. 

Black Mirror and a Bleak Future

Black Mirror is a TV show that portrays a post-modern, dystopian future in which modern technology is our demise. One of the episodes called "Nosedive" focuses on a topic that is seemingly brought up at every social gathering, in every classroom, in every conversation: our addiction to social media.

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"Nosedive" portrays a world where everyone is given ratings on a 1-5 scale by people around them. If you like someone, you give them a good rating and their overall average increases. If you don't like someone, you give them a poor rating and their average decreases. However, the average that is portrayed is not the true average of all the readings the person received. The ratings of people who are a 4 or 5 count more towards the average than someone's rating with a low ranking. That means that you want to try to impress and befriend people with higher rankings.

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Above everyone's head is their name and their ranking seen through a special contact lens. The purpose of the lens is to determine who to talk to in order to increase your own numbers. The lens also serves as a tool for social and societal discrimination. A high ranking means more friends, higher quality cars and devices, higher prioritization for plane tickets, and access to any luxury they desire. The life of someone who has a low rank is the exact opposite. Essentially, how well off you are in life depends solely on what other people think about you.

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What makes "Nosedive" so disturbing to some people is that they can see this happening to us in the future. Considering how addicted we are to social media and having people like us, it's not a far stretch of our imaginations. "Nosedive" does a great job of playing off of one of our biggest fears regarding modern technology.

Hush

Hush is a home-invasion horror movie with one twist: the main character is deaf. Imagine yourself trapped in your house without the ability to hear what goes bump in the night. You know the killer is outside, but how do you know where the killer is? If the power goes out, which it will, your sight is impaired as well. This is what Maddie (Kate Siegel) experiences in Hush.

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The fact that the main character of this movie is deaf makes Hush much more innovative and engaging for the audience than typical horror movies. During climaxes in the story, the sound is cut out to immerse the viewers in the fear that Maddie is feeling.

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Even though the directors of Hush twisted the conventional protagonist of a home invasion movie, they still left the majority of horror movie stereotypes untouched. One example of this would be that Maddie lives in an isolated area deep in the woods where no one visits her except her neighbor on occasion: the perfect setting for a serial killer. Loud noises meant to make the audience jump are heard throughout the movie, but used more effectively than usual.

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Not all the scares in this movie are meant to make you jump. In the beginning of the movie, the killer decides to announce his presence by stealing Maddie's phone and sending pictures to her computer of her sitting in her living room. What makes it even creepier is that the pictures keep sending as she's investigating.

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Overall, I found Maddie to be the most engaging part of the story. Because she's a writer, she imagines different scenarios in her head which we get to see along with her before she makes a decision. Her ability to stay quick on her feet, outsmart the killer, and become a formidable foe enhances Hush even more.