A Major Misfire of a John Travolta Performance Anchors the Dismal The Fanatic

People on the Autism spectrum like myself have to deal with a lot of...let's say troublesome depictions of people in our community in pop culture. Typically, people on the Autism spectrum are reduced to being childlike savant sidekicks in American film/television that exist to deliver quips rather than actually function as people. To boot, such depictions are almost exclusively based on cis-het white dudes, furthering the incorrect perception that people of color and women cannot have Autism. There have been some exceptions to this rule, thankfully, but The Fanatic is not one of them, which features a person on the Autism spectrum as the titular lead whose fixation on a celebrity eventually turns violent.

Keep The Change Creates An Engaging Romantic-Comedy By Treating People on the Autism Spectrum Like People

I've been waiting for years for a movie like Keep the Change. As an avid lover of cinema who resides on the Autism spectrum, I've been dying to see more movies with characters on the Autism spectrum who actually seem like real people instead of variations on Rain Man or Sheldon Cooper. Aside from the rare burst of Autistic authenticity seen in figures like Christian Bale's character in The Big Short, it's hard for me to recognize any sense of reality in conventional pop culture approaches to people on the Autism spectrum. This unfortunate trend has left me waiting for eons for a motion picture that actually tackles people on the Autism spectrum in a thoughtful manner and finally, the wait has paid off with the arrival of Keep the Change.

Atypical's Brief Moments Of Promise Are Overshadowed By Lazy And Stereotypical Writing

For a TV show whose very title places an enormous emphasis on being unique, Atypical is a tragically conventional show in nearly every respect. Risks of any kind are kept to a minimum on this program and the positive qualities are even more sparse. It's the kind of TV show that struck can go eight episodes (each running from 29-37 minutes in length) without really carving out its own distinct identity or making its characters interesting or even just delivering some solid jokes. Worst of all, it ends up falling prey to some of the most egregious flaws found in typical American pop culture portrayals of people on the Autism spectrum.

Saban's Power Rangers Is...Diverting Fun? Wait, What, It's Actually Fun? Huh.

Someone at Saban Entertainment (the company that owns Power Rangers) obviously wanted to make a live-action feature film about the Power Rangers in order to cash in on the craze of big-budget live-action movies adapting childhood TV shows with massive nostalgia-driven fanbases. And so, lo and behold, the resulting project is Saban's Power Rangers, a $100 million budgeted motion picture whose starting premise basically amounts to "What if we merged The Breakfast Club and Pacific Rim into one movie?". That very much sounds like two motion pictures that should never ever be mashed together but they've gone and done just that. The resulting movie is....actually not bad, much better than I expected it to be, though this whole thing carries more than a few major shortcomings to its name.

Art And Humanity Collide In Life, Animated

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs turns 80 years old. Think about that for a second. This movie is only 20 years away from having existed for an entire century. While Snow White and her diminutive pals may be the oldest film in the Walt Disney Animation Studios library, it's far from the only movie the studio has created that's endured throughout the decades. Thes likes of Jiminy Cricket, Dumbo and Mickey Mouse have been entertaining kids and adults alike for so long now, it's impossible to imagine the current pop culture landscape would even exist without them. But how do films like these manage to keep going on from generation to generation? Maybe it's because for many, these Disney animated films aren't just movies but a way to understand the world around them.