It’s surely easy to overstate how groundbreaking the film Koyaanisqatsi was at the time of its enthusiastically-received 1982 premiere and its massive-hit-by-cult-film-standards commercial release in 1983, but I would be much more wary of diminishing it than puffing it up. Ever since it was young, an honest reckoning with the techniques and aesthetics of this […]

Woe betide anybody who sits down in front of Moonage Daydream expecting to learn something concrete about David Bowie. That’s not a criticism, let me hasten to clarify—expository documentaries generally leave me wishing that I’d read a book or lengthy article on the subject instead, and I was drawn to this film less as a […]

A review requested by Michael Matula, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! Pink Floyd’s 1979 double album The Wall was accompanied by one of the most ridiculously complex tour […]

The following link is current as of November 2023: https://vimeo.com/394801904) In 1995, during the first real lull in Miyazaki Hayao’s filmmaking career since the beginning of the 1980s, he was approached by the pop duo Chage & Aska, who wanted him to make a music video. With nothing else to do at the moment, Miyazaki […]

Many a year ago, when I was first readying to watch the notorious Beatles film Magical Mystery Tour, I was given this advice: “just fast-forward between the songs. Don’t watch the story. Pretend it’s a series of music videos.” I’d be inclined to repeat that advice for anyone thinking about seeing the new Outkast musical […]