animation
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The 10 Best Films of 2026, So Far: A Midyear Report
For once, a future where peaceful coexistence between franchise fare and fresh stories doesn’t feel quite as much of a fantasy. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 12: The Death of Girls and Toys
Whether or not “Toy Story 5” has legs remains to be seen – historically, the franchise does incredibly well in the months after release, but it’s not usually been up against other animation tentpoles in an extraordinarily crowded summer. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 11: Stop! That! Disclosure Day!
This weekend’s box office had the steepest drop in four weeks, but that should only be expected after a completely unforeseen run of miracles. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 10: Masters of the Scary Movie Universe
We went from Netflix executives loudly proclaiming that “theatrical is dead!” to two small-budget horror flicks savaging “Star Wars,” one of the most reliable pop culture properties, at the box office. Continue reading
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Lessons from the Wasteland: Stop-Motion Animation
Welcome to class! Each film on this curated watchlist will highlight either a filmmaker, sub-genre, filmmaking technique, or significant topic in order to broaden your cinematic horizons. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 7: Obsessed with the Draft
“Michael” won the box office again in its fourth week, a strong showing after dropping down to #3 last weekend. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 6: Sheep Kombat
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” continues to slay in the top spot, with new releases “Mortal Kombat II,” “The Sheep Detectives,” and Billie Eilish’s tour/concert doc “Hit Me Hard and Soft” trailing close behind. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 5: The Devil Wears Dollars
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Michael” are both formidable opponents and major successes for their respective studios. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 4: A Thriller Weekend
The domestic box office was up over sixty percent this week, and that is almost entirely thanks to “Michael,” the problematic musical biopic that moonwalked to almost $100 million in its first few days alone. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 3: Lee Cronin’s Mummy Mary
This weekend, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” continued its rampage across North American theaters, remaining at Number One, though its lead is not quite what it used to be. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 2: Faces of Tuscany Death
This is the first week in which we are taking into account the critical scores, including from aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Letterboxd, and IMDb. Continue reading
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Movie Fantasy League Week 1: It Has Risen
This past weekend was Easter weekend, which tends to be one of the softer holiday weekends in the spring/summer season, but even more importantly, it continued to be “spring break season.” Continue reading
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Lessons from the Wasteland: Anime
Welcome to class! Each film on this curated watchlist will highlight either a filmmaker, sub-genre, filmmaking technique, or significant topic in order to broaden your cinematic horizons. Continue reading
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Dr. Oscar or: How I Learned to Stop Being Judgy and Love the Short Film
There’s a world of great art out there, if you only take the time to seek it out. Continue reading
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Our Most Anticipated Movies of 2026
Bring on the new year! Iconic filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Denis Villeneuve, Greta Gerwig, Christopher Nolan, Danny Boyle, Sam Raimi, Gore Verbinski, and many other icons will be gracing our screens with epic new offerings, and though it looks to… Continue reading
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The Underseen Gems of 2025
Knock on Wood presents: our favorite under-appreciated masterpieces from 2025. Continue reading
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Lessons from the Wasteland: Early Animation
Welcome to class! Each film on this curated watchlist will highlight either a filmmaker, sub-genre, filmmaking technique, or significant topic in order to broaden your cinematic horizons. Continue reading
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Five Underseen Horror Films to Watch This July (May’s Monthly Recs)
Welcome to the second edition of May’s Monthly Horror Recs, where it’s always the time of year for scary movies! Continue reading
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The 10 Best Films of 2025, So Far: A Midyear Report
Today marks the midway point of both an unusually painful year and the most tumultuous decade in recent memory. Today, we will be examining ten films released this year that our contributors connected with, and have so far taken their… Continue reading
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Lessons from the Wasteland: Flashbacks
Welcome to class! Each film on this curated watchlist will highlight either a filmmaker, sub-genre, filmmaking technique, or significant topic in order to broaden your cinematic horizons. Continue reading
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Our Most Anticipated Movies of 2025
There are plenty of films, whether they be original, adaptations, or sequels, that we’re looking forward to this year. Continue reading
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The 10 Best Films of 2024
Though it may not have reached the heights of years previous, 2024 has proven to be a fascinating year for cinema. Continue reading
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The Underseen Gems of 2024
Knock on Wood presents: our favorite under-appreciated masterpieces from 2024. Continue reading
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Lessons from the Wasteland: Montage
Welcome to class! Each film on this curated watchlist will highlight either a filmmaker, sub-genre, filmmaking technique, or significant topic in order to broaden your cinematic horizons. Continue reading
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The 25 Best Movie Musicals of the Last 25 Years
Musicals have certainly had their ups and downs over the years, but it’s quite clear that musicals are experiencing a high water mark in entertainment spectacle and audience engagement. Continue reading
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“The War of the Rohirrim” Bottles the Best of Middle-Earth (Review)
“The War of the Rohirrim” perfectly recreates Tolkien’s fully-realized world in a way we haven’t quite seen before. Continue reading
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Too Many Movies, Too Little Time: A Summary of the 2024 Fall Movie Season (Part Two)
To commemorate the conclusion of the season, we have reviewed every new release (that I have seen) that has not been previously covered on our site. Continue reading
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Awards Season Ramps Up: A Summary of the 2024 Fall Movie Season (Part One)
To commemorate the conclusion of the season, we have reviewed every new release (that I have seen) that has not been previously covered on our site. Continue reading
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Wallace & Gromit Return with a “Vengeance Most Fowl” (Review)
This new film is the confluence of the best ideas and imagery this series has offered in its 35 years of history, and to bring back one of their most iconic baddies is just icing on the cake. Continue reading
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The Movies That Made Us – A One-Year Anniversary Celebration
Even if they weren’t the exact movie that made you a cinephile, every film fan has one (or many) that you can cite as one of the central inspirations for that passion. Continue reading
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“Moana 2” Struggles with Structure (Review)
One song every quarter of an hour cements what I already knew (and this is the kicker) – I think this would have made a very good series. Continue reading
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“Look Back” on the Beauty of Art and the Everyday (Review)
“Look Back” is a compelling argument for the power of art to transcend space and time and connect with the deepest parts of ourselves. Continue reading
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Pharrell Williams Takes Us Through his LEGO Life “Piece by Piece” (Review)
The story itself doesn’t matter. It all comes down to how it’s told. Continue reading
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The Most Exciting Film Festival Premieres of 2024
Film festivals happen throughout the year, but the premieres ramp up from the end of the summer through the beginning of fall. Continue reading
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Everything We Didn’t Review: A Summary of the 2024 Summer Movie Season
To commemorate the conclusion of the season, we have reviewed every new release (that I have seen) that has not been previously covered on our site. Continue reading
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The 10 Best Films of 2024, So Far: A Midyear Report
Whether or not 2024 will outlast 2023 in terms of beloved classics, there’s still plenty of time for the new releases to surprise us. Continue reading
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Ro’s Colored Glasses: Revisiting the Time-Traveling Antics of “Mr. Peabody and Sherman”
Ro’s Colored Glasses is a series where I re-examine these films from my childhood with a more refined and educated perspective, and re-evaluate them as fairly and objectively as possible (if there even is such a method). Continue reading
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Looking Ahead to the 2025 Oscars
Every year, when the Academy Awards are done and over with, the minds of curious cinephiles are always thinking ahead. It will be nearly a year before next year’s ceremony, but it’s never too early to start predicting – especially… Continue reading
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How To Win Your 2024 Office Oscar Pool
A time-honored office tradition is slinging money on the Oscars. Because, and let’s be honest, one of the most simple joys in life is upstaging your co-workers. And this year’s Oscars are right around the corner, set to air the… Continue reading
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The Wasteland Spotlight: 7th Annual Animation First Film Festival
If you’re looking for new outlets for checking out films, this article series is a perfect way to seek out new channels to dive into. For this edition, I highlight some of the films premiering at France’s 7th Annual Animation… Continue reading
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The Wasteland Spotlight: 2024 Sundance Short Films
If you’re looking for new outlets for checking out films, this article series is a perfect way to seek out new channels for new films to dive into. For this edition, I highlight some of the short films premiering at… Continue reading
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Ten Takeaways from the 2024 Oscar Nominations
Another year, another round of Oscar nominations to over-analyze until the glorious cycle repeats itself next awards season. Let us embark on this journey together as we discuss ten snubs, surprises, musings, and takeaways from the 2024 Oscar nominations. Continue reading
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If I Picked the Oscars: A Dream of 2024
If you had control over the Academy Awards…what would you nominate? It’s a question that’s almost certainly run through the minds of every cinephile, and instead of hopelessly dreaming this year, I decided to put them into words. Continue reading
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The 10 Best Films of 2023
By all accounts, 2023 was an incredible year for film. Our contributors saw a cumulative hundreds of films from January to December, but there were some clear favorites. What follows is the combined Knock on Wood Top 10 of 2023. Continue reading
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The Underseen Gems of 2023
While some films garner awards attention and spread rapidly across the zeitgeist through word-of-mouth, the majority find it difficult to break through the myriad of new releases. Each of our writers will take you on a journey through some of… Continue reading
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Examining “The Boy and the Heron” as Miyazaki’s True Masterpiece
In the complete picture that is the Ghibli pantheon, “The Boy and the Heron” is a culmination of Miyazaki’s works and the themes that have proliferated each one. Continue reading
