Core Concepts
Loose notes on the ideas I keep coming back to across my reviews. Not essays — more me thinking out loud, tracing one instinct at a time through the films and albums where it showed up, so I score on purpose instead of by feel.
- Craft vs. Meaning — craft gets me to “great”; only meaning gets me past it.
- Externalizing the Internal — the visual direction I reward most: putting an interior state on screen, doing what dialogue can’t.
- Performance and Authenticity — the question I keep asking my subjects: where does the mask end and the real thing begin?
- Earned Emotion — the difference between a feeling I was given and one the work earned.
Living notes — I’ll grow these as I add reviews and spot new patterns in how I judge things.