Magellans at the Movies

War, what is it good for? It’s a question that has hounded philosophers, humanitarians, politicians, Fallout protagonists, and more. Throughout history many people at some point in their life have paused to consider whether humanity’s most destructive method of conflict resolution might be more trouble than it’s worth, and some of those people, upon reaching a negative conclusion, have put pen to...

When people think about the ways in which they would improve the high school experience, there are probably a wide range of elements they mark out as being particularly painful for all who experience it. Buildings with all the aesthetic flare and functional layout of a three-year-old’s pillow fort. State-approved lesson plans capable of reducing even the most dynamic, vibrant subjects into the edu...

We’ve just been invited to an eccentric billionaire’s island home, and you know what that means: vacation time! Grab your trunks, your sunscreen, and ninety-nine bottles of beer to be appended to the wall and distributed communally one by one over the course of the trip because we are paradise bound! We’ll probably be drunk by the time we get there because that’s a lot of alcohol, but, after a gre...

Spider-man. If you’re a member of today’s youth, upon whose childhood Disney’s film franchises could feasibly claim an executive producer credit, the name probably evokes images of Tom Holland. Spider-man in his most recent iteration was part of an established brand before he even thwipped his first web in Captain America: Civil War, and his further appearances in Avengers movies as well as his ow...

What if I told you that an infinite set of universes existed and was open to you as long as you’re willing to wear a funny earpiece and lick the nearest traditionally un-licked thing? “Fiddlesticks!” I hear you say. “Why, that kind of poppycock is fit only for speculative fiction!” You’re quite right, O reader of the outdated vernacular, but don’t be so quick to dismiss speculative fiction such as...

Nature can be both awesome in its complexity and beauty and terrifying in its power and scale. The diseased raccoon sifting through your garbage can at midnight may appear like a gentle, majestic citizen of the forest, but fail to treat it with respect and reverence and you will know the wrath of nature. That’s enough about how I got my new rabies shots, though, let’s talk about Godzilla, the dise...

Baths, you may know them as those mini-swimming pools you used to clean off in when you were young and had time for anything more luxurious than a five second rinse in the shower and a few spritzes of Axe body spray, but that’s just because your mindset isn’t cosmopolitan enough. Around the world, baths aren’t always individual experiences where you burn your skin off with whatever toxic waste the...

Everyone hates winter, or at least everyone who has good opinions on seasons dislikes winter. And every writer has some amount of self-loathing going, otherwise they would pursue a more lucrative career such as working in masonry. And even further, it seems like everyone in the 80s hated their family, so when Jack Torrence took a job being stuck in a hotel with his family for the winter to attempt...

The director. When it comes to the process of making movies there are few positions that hold the promise of greater acclaim for success or more ruthless criticism for failure. Rightly or wrongly, the director of a movie is sort of the face of the production. If an actor turns in a shoddy performance, we might say that they were given poor direction. If the cinematographer has apparently confused...

You know, it’s at times like these that I like to pause and reflect on what makes a good movie. Why do some legends of the silver screen leave us cheering with rapturous abandon, chattering excitedly to our seatmates about the experience we have just shared while others see us walking out of the theater in disgust, our delicious snacks abandoned and our outlook ever so slightly dimmed? I can’t ans...

I can hardly wait! Memento is unsurprisingly difficult to follow, but those that endure the initial confusion will be rewarded with a truly special movie about how reality is constructed through memory and perception all wrapped up in Nolan’s classically sharp writing and cast of immensely talented actors. If you know anything about Memento it is almost certainly its novel structure, told backward...

A little plastic, a little glass, and a reason to rule all, that is myself- Marcus Aurelius if he was a computer. It is with these powerful words in mind that Steve Jobs (probably) set out to usher in the information age by providing every man, woman, and child with the means to access an increasingly intelligent, versatile series of electronic brains capable of processing and performing ever-more...

Greetings! Welcome to Magellans at the Airport Travel Agency, I’ll be helping you for today. Looking to get away from it all but not sure where to go? Eager for a relaxing stay in a refined, high-class environment? Well let’s take a dive into this file here and see what we can’t scare up for you. Hmm, the Bates Motel? Nice place but the showers are a bit dodgy. Hotel Earle? Run by the Coen brother...

Murder. Hopelessness. Darkness. The creeping, oppressive fear of life’s monstrous emptiness that spreads in the brain like a malignant tumor and drowns all light and joy in a grim tide of crushing resignation. Bleak stuff, yes? Maybe for silly sheeple like you and I who believe in things like hope, objective truths, and some kind of logically defensible moral structure, but for director David Finc...

Fish, probably the most unwelcome thing to find on a pizza aside from maybe a heaping helping of crude oil. You probably don’t think that much about fish as you go through your daily life, and unless you’re a sociopathic dentist trafficking kidnapped fish to your equally unhinged niece to murder, they’re not terribly concerned with you either. This mutual indifference does a great disservice to bo...

So, your mother has just died, leaving her estate in your care, but the rapacious bank with which she did business spent the last few years of her life squeezing pennies out of her pocket with sadistic glee. You’re a divorced dad who wants to do right by your children and leave them the family ranch that has just been found to be oil rich, but the bank is closing in, ready to foreclose and reclaim...

If any franchise can be described as rivaling Star Wars’ world-dominating ubiquity, it’s probably Marvel. Beginning with a film charting a billionaire’s efforts to essentially make himself a terminator suit powered by a miraculous new energy source in a cave with nothing but scraps (a premise that, despite Jeff Bridges’ incredulity, comes off as hard-core realism compared to the more . . . imagina...

Being a mobster can be a bit of a mixed bag. Sure you can have all the atrocious pinky rings, oily hair, and pressed suits you could ever wish for, but at what cost? According to Goodfellas, the 1990 mob movie following the life of actual former gangster Henry Hill directed by the master of mob movies Martin Scorcese, that cost is a Shakespearean fall from grace attended by all manner of marital s...

Well, dear reader, it seems we have arrived at the tenth installment of Magellans at the Movies, and the tenth bit of anything is always considered notable for reasons I’ve never really understood. I guess people just like the number ten because it’s usually the easy part of math problems. Anyways, over the past weeks you’ve listened to and come to love Magellans at the Movies for its biting criti...

Prison, it’s where you go when a simple disagreement between you and a particularly ornery spider monkey at the zoo gets more than a little heated and can no longer be constrained by a chain link fence. After the monkey’s tearful (but totally exaggerated) testimony moves the judge to throw the book at you, you’ll find yourself in a high-security hotel where early checkouts are frowned upon, your r...

Nope. What a versatile, efficient word it is. Truly the Swiss army knife of refusals, it can be employed to firmly shut down the unwanted advances of belligerent drunkards, casually indicate one’s satiated appetite when food is being ordered, or awkwardly turn back the weapons grade LSD you’ve just been handed at your nephew’s birthday party for some reason. We’re not here to talk about why I don’...

Allow me to impart a story to you, dear reader. Back when this program was getting started, I attended a conference in Dubai for exciting young creatives at the bleeding edge of innovation in the field of podcasts. After the guards realized my credentials were fake and threw me out the third floor window, I was wandering the city in despair when I stumbled upon a homeless man, sitting beneath a br...

“Life in South Korea can be hard,” says director Bong Joon Ho’s 2019 thriller/mystery/think piece/comedy/who-even-knows movie Parasite. “Its cities are crowded, its economic mobility limited, and its toilets prone to expressing their dissatisfaction with all the (admittedly unpleasant) ins and outs of daily toilet life by returning the contents it was meant to consign to oblivion right back into t...

Ah, middle school. That crucible of adolescent life straddling the divide between the sugary, innocent and carefree days of childhood and the more serious physical, social, and mental developments of high school (that other crucible of adolescent life). Herein boys and girls become . . . uh, slightly older boys and girls, and because human society has a truly alarming belief in the virtue of socia...

Jurassic World: Dominion, what a movie! Eye-popping special effects, likable characters, thought-provoking ideas about the relationship between man and nature, and complemented by impeccable scenes of tension that proudly take their place among the best feats cinema has to offer! Oh, wait, no I’m thinking of Jurassic Park. Jurassic World: Dominion is Jurassic Park’s second cousin, bitterly toiling...