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Chinatown' s uncanny parallels with Jack Nicholson’s life

It’s one of the most famous scenes in cinema history. Private Detective, Jake Gittes, is attempting to force the truth out of his lovely but damaged client, Evelyn Mulwray. Just who is the mysterious teenager everyone’s searching for?

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Film Lists

9 Beloved Childhood Movies (That Permanently Traumatized Us)

What were these scenes even doing in kids' movies?

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Do you remember the first time a sad scene in a movie left you sobbing? Or the first time a scary movie kept you up all night?

When you're a kid, your mind is still so malleable, and you haven't built up that callous that keeps movies at a distance. You might even wish — while you're watching the latest Conjuring movie — that you could get back to that credulous mindset that makes the horrors onscreen come alive in the dark corners of the room.

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Satire

The Only Problem with "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" Is the Lesbian Kiss at the End

And this has nothing to do with my personal hang-ups, so stop thinking that

Horrifying

Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

People will tell you a lot of bad things about Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker.

They'll say things like, "The pacing is jarring. It spends too much time undoing the events of the last movie, and has to cram its own action into rushed exposition that dominates the dialogue, and the sandwiching of multiple connected MacGuffins does not provide enough of a framework for a satisfying plot." Wrong.

The people who tell you this are allowing themselves to be distracted from the real issue. Yes, when I was watching the movie I thought many of the same things that you will read in these foolish reviews. What they are overlooking is that all of these problems—even the way J.J. Abrams erases death, undermining the stakes of the film entirely—could have been easily resolved in the mind of the audience if only we had not been distracted, in the film's final moments, by the lingering site of two women lovingly sharing a kiss. Disgusting.

This is what is ruining Star Wars! I've been saying it since 2015, along with every other cool guy on the internet. Not the way insane new force powers are magically introduced so that none of the strictures of storytelling apply anymore; the problem is the feminist SJW culture wars.

Imagine what amazing insights I would have had to come up with in order to reconcile the confusing mess I just watched with the conviction that it all actually makes sense and is a great movie. I probably would have uncovered hidden significance in the endless mundanity of moments that comprised The Rise of Skywalker's runtime. But instead I spent my whole night distracted and obsessing over the sight of two mouths mashing into each other, with a lady attached to each end. The horror of it kept me up all night, researching on dark corners of the internet.



If it had just been a flash on the screen, perhaps I could have chalked it up to a figment of my overactive imagination. I could have told myself that they had kissed each other by mistake, while attempting to walk past each other, toward their strong important husbands. Or maybe it was just a slender man with long hair kissing his teenage son. But no, they lingered on the shot of this lesbonic couple's physical manifestation of unholy lust for a full three seconds. That's longer than even Tom Brady kisses his children on the mouth.

How am I supposed to remove this image from where it's seared in my memory. Each time I close my eyes in the shower, I see it again. These are images too graphically sinful to watch in a room with the lights on or the door unlocked, yet I was watching them in a theater with children who probably intend to one day engage in kissing of their own. How are their parents supposed to explain what they witnessed?

And if they're fixated on that formidable task, how are they supposed to also explain why beads and helmets can teleport through space? How the force can heal all wounds and conjure spaceships from nothing? Or why normal people now have very convenient force hunches that arrive just in time to save the entire galaxy? If it weren't for that kiss, we all could have done it. But now we all have no choice but to be swallowed up by the hideous sarlacc mouth of two women's lips smooshing all over each other. Cruel fate.

FILM

10 Best Celebrity Cameos in Movies

Impress your friends by identifying major celebrities in movies.

Dreamworks Pictures

Every movie buff loves a great cameo.

A well-placed cameo can even be the highlight of an already great film. Who doesn't love turning to their movie-watching partner and whisper-shouting, "GADZOOKS! THAT'S (insert person you recognize)!" We've compiled the 10 best movie cameos of all time (in no particular order). Check them out and then go impress your friends with your crazy movie knowledge.

Ben Stiller in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

ben stiller anchorman

Dreamworks Pictures

Anchorman had a ton of great cameos, but none of them beat Ben Stiller as Arturo Mendez of the Spanish Language News Team. Just breathe in that mustache.

Fall has just begun, meaning Halloween is right around the corner. But something else is lurking around the corner too, and it's not pumpkin spice lattes...

Okay, it is pumpkin spice lattes.

But also, October is all about snuggling up under a blanket and streaming scary movies on Netflix. Unfortunately, Netflix's horror movie section is a minefield of hot garbage with a few spooky gems strewn amongst the trash. Luckily, we're here to guide you to the right choices. Think of this list kind of like your own personal Netflix Halloween Minesweeper.

The Conjuring

The Conjuring may have spawned an infinite number of mediocre sequels, but the original deserves all of its success. James Wan directs with subtlety, earning scares through well-crafted tension-building instead of cheap jump spooks.