Why We Go To The Movies | Alessandro Di-Girolamo | Substack

5 Films Hollywood Should Actually Remake

The Case for Remaking Near-Misses

READ THE LATEST

Most Popular

The Ten-Year Oscars

Mar 1 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

Arrival & The Cost of Knowledge

Apr 7 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

Fargo’s Norm Is the Best Movie Husband of the Last 30 Years

Jan 27 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

The 2026 Oscars Are Unusually Open. Here’s My Ballot

Mar 12 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

Recent posts

Arrival & The Cost of Knowledge

Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi masterpiece and the courage to live fully

Apr 7 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

Righting the Wrongs of Oscars Past: 2015 Edition

Birdman, Interstellar, Whiplash, and a Twelve-Year Gamble

Apr 1 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

Righting the Wrongs of Oscars Past: 2015 Edition (Coming Soon)

A verdict is coming. But first, I want yours.

Mar 23 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

A Method Out of Time: Louis Theroux and the Manosphere

When exposure stops working and the subject already owns the microphone

Mar 17 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

Did the Loudest Cheer of the Night Predict the Oscar?

A deeply scientific study conducted during the ceremony

Mar 16 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

The 2026 Oscars Are Unusually Open. Here’s My Ballot

Predictions, personal picks, and a few grudges. Including the impossible choice between Sinners and One Battle After Another.

Mar 12 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

The Bride! Review

Something Dead, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Mar 7 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

We've Got Dolls In This House

Mar 3 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

The Ten-Year Oscars

The case for awarding films ten years late, and why 2015 belonged to Mad Max: Fury Road all along.

Mar 1 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

Crime 101 Review: A Slick LA Heist Thriller That Doesn’t Quite Reach Greatness

Bart Layton’s Crime 101 wears its influences openly, sitting squarely in the lineage of modern LA crime thrillers.

Feb 19 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

On First Reformed and the Seduction of Moral Exhaustion

First Reformed is, on first reading, a film about the climate crisis or a crisis of faith.

Feb 17 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

Against Funny Games

Since its release, Michael Haneke’s Funny Games has been canonised as a bracing moral rebuke to cinematic violence, a film less meant to be enjoyed than…

Feb 9 • Alessandro Di-Girolamo

Why We Go To The Movies

Why We Go To The Movies

Essays about movies, and how they make me feel. Sometimes serious, sometimes not.

Recommendations

The Harperverse

Daniel Harper

Joshua Zyber

Do You Like Apples

Drew Wendt

A Celebration of Cinema

Oene Kummer

Shea Serrano

#nojs-banner { position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; padding: 16px 16px 16px 32px; width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; background: red; color: white; font-family: -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px; } #nojs-banner a { color: inherit; text-decoration: underline; } This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts