This point in the semester sucks. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got presentations, projects and a second round of exams rolling around, but all you really want to do is dress up and have fun on Halloweekend. 

Ah … the internet: where millions gather to anonymously joke about raiding Area 51 and young people nationwide get their kicks slamming back Tide Pods on camera. Long lauded as the great democratizer, the internet provides a space in which even the Jar Jar Binkses of the world have an opportunity to be heard by making a splash outside the confines of traditional media. Yet alongside the bizarre conspiracy plots, detergent guzzling and radical resistance, the internet also provides a space where alternative voices in media can gain a following.

Since 2008 saw the release of superhero movie tentpoles The Dark Knight and Iron Man, the genre has pervaded nearly every aspect of the film world. As the years progressed, comic book movies have become increasingly formulaic and reliance on shared cinematic universes has grown more and more prevalent. 

Once upon a time, in a sleepy, quaint European village, there lived a bad, bad goose. One day, the goose was feeling even more horrible than usual, so it decided to wreak all manner of nastiness and chaos on the village and its inhabitants. The goose threw a gardener’s rake in the lake, it trapped the little boy in the telephone booth and it even made the old man fall on his bum. 

Space movies are unique because of the way they allow audiences to consider interpersonal relationships, thoughts and character development in a way that is removed from external influences like politics or culture. Director James Gray’s film Ad Astra, which was released on Friday Sept. 20, masterfully explores this phenomenon by sending Major Roy McBride—played by Brad Pitt—on an introspective journey across the solar system in the pursuit of his estranged father. 

Frank Lopes Jr., the titular hobo of the Sacramento-based musical group Hobo Johnson and the Lovemakers, is the utterly fascinating spokesperson of the manic and lonely. According to Ones to Watch, Lopes Jr. was kicked out of his parents’ house at the age of 19 and subsequently had to turn to his 1994 Toyota Corolla for shelter—the bout of homelessness served as inspiration for his “Hobo Johnson” stage name. 

Onions and ogres both have layers, and so do memes on the internet. That’s right folks, this week I’m examining the 2001 animated classic, Shrek. The lovable green ogre has now been a part of the collective consciousness for almost 20 years and, as the 2010s wind to a close, it’s fun to consider the character’s transformation into one of the most consistent, pervading and inexplicable internet memes of this decade. 

Disney is an interesting and fun company to think about particularly in the context of the wider entertainment world. As the architect of so very many childhood memories, the House of Mouse has long had a stranglehold on the nostalgia industry and some savvy recent business moves, like their acquisition of 21st Century Fox, have turned the company into an increasingly worrisome juggernaut. 

As Marvel prepares to release the culmination of more than a decade of world building with Avengers: Endgame on April 26, Warner Bros. has quietly dropped David F. Sandberg’s Shazam!, one of the most endearing, earnest movies to be released in more than a decade of superhero films.

Stories are most compelling when characters are realistic. Nobody is perfect, so when humanity’s latent flaws are accurately expressed in a character, audiences are more likely to become invested than stories based on unrealistic stereotypes.

The final season of “Game of Thrones,” premiering April 14, is not the last time audiences can experience George R.R. Martin’s masterful fantasy world. A “Thrones” prequel series—scripted by Martin himself and Kingsman screenwriter Jane Goldman—will hopefully start production later this year, according to Deadline.

Samuel L. Jackson quotes Tarantino’s dramatized version of “Ezekiel 25:17” in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction when he promises to “strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy [his] brothers.” 

Andrew Hozier-Byrne is an ethereal Irish singer-songwriter who performs under the mononym Hozier. In Greek mythology, a satyr is a male nature spirit known for their love for music, dancing and sex; the two figures might just be one and the same. 

Somehow, against all odds, the 2019 Oscars awards ended up being … okay? For the first time since 1989, the Oscars went without a host, and everything in the world seemed to indicate that this was an awful idea. 

The 91st Academy Awards air on Sunday Feb. 24 and will be the culmination of a particularly contentious awards season. Many of the major awards still seem wide-open, with most lacking a clear front-runner. Yet, as is often the case, this year’s Oscars will be defined by its losers as much as it’s defined by who brings home a statue on Sunday. 

The best romantic comedy released in recent memory is the Kumail Nanjiani-led autobiographical film The Big Sick. Co-writers Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s sincere dramatization tells the off-beat, comedic story of how the real-life couple met and fell in love.