The Academy often avoids movies, even brilliant ones, if they’re too offensive — This isn’t about how bad the films that won were. None of them were. In fact, The Academy doesn’t seem to allow films to win that are bad. They always choose good ones. But sometimes they’re too safe. Often they avoid movies that are dark, scary, or off-putting. Even when…

The romance genre often needs to strike a delicate balance, considering sincerity, cliche, and melodrama — There are some extremes characteristic of romance films. On the one hand is the saccharine, sentimental love story with guaranteed happy endings. And on the other, emotional exploitation plots, pulling us in and then attempting to squeeze tears from us by smashing our hearts to pieces. There are films that…

From art to athletics, flow is the psychological process by which so much is possible — What is flow? Flow is a concept of psychology, in particular positive psychology, emphasizing concentration, full immersion in an activity, and a transformation in one’s sense of time while so doing. Everywhere from improvising music to cleaning the house, flow can be experienced in many aspects of daily life.

It was all a dream, it was all a lie, and none of these movies would be the same without their creepy revelations — Wait…what? They really had us going there. Twist endings are everywhere in film, maybe even most famously in thrillers and horror. The killer isn’t who you thought, everything was a farce, the good guy was a backstabber, the devil was behind the whole thing. There’s a fairly delicate finesse needed…

The film offers a variety of lessons that I have distilled through my own background in mental illness — I really enjoyed A Beautiful Mind the first time I saw it in 2001, in theaters (I was 14). It’s a very good film in some ways, and not such a good one in others. But I don’t think another review would benefit the world. Instead, I have a unique…

Many relationships won’t stand up for the long haul. Learn to identify some of the warning signs so we know what to expect. — Even if it’s love, it might not work out. When I was younger, I had trouble understanding this. I thought, naively, that if two people loved each other, that would be the only thing that mattered. The relationship would be held up naturally by its own passionate buoyancy. But it…

As a debatably autistic and recovered schizoaffective person, I talk about my self-diagnosis, pro diagnosis, and overall neurodiversity — 1. A possible missed diagnosis in childhood Autism is known for being easier to diagnose in children than adults. But when I was a kid, Autism by its presently understood definition as I see myself in, didn’t exist. There was HFA (High Functioning Autism), which I wouldn’t qualify for due to having no delay in language development.

Because how many of us are reclusively daunted by getting out and say, jogging down the street, or on the treadmill at the gym? — 1. Go up and down the stairs until exhaustion This one is really easy and fun to do if you put some music on (maybe use headphones if you’ve got neighbors). It doesn’t have to be in a house necessarily. There are plenty of apartment buildings with indoor or outdoor staircases, where you could probably get away with doing…

Maybe there’s no secret to film success, but at least we can notice a few fundamental patterns — The films I’ve chosen range from undying, culturally-essential classics to summer blockbusters. Regardless, all represent much-hyped filmic phenomena of various kinds. We can see that all films on this list share some crucial accomplishments. They feature a low budget and production cost. …