Moneyball Is Even Better Than You Remember

I revisited Moneyball on a whim mostly because of how much Ad Astra had given me a hankering to watch other quality Brad Pitt star vehicles. Having seen the film twice in its original theatrical release, I was very familiar with Moneyball, but I hadn't seen in it in about eight years. It was time for a rewatch. Sometimes coming back to a movie years later reveals that a film is lesser than you remember it being, your growth as a consumer of a cinema makes the cracks in a film you loved more apparent. Luckily, rewatching Moneyball was not one of those experiences. In fact, I garnered a whole new level of appreciation for this excellent feature and the qualities that make it as engrossing as it is.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie Is Slight But Does Deliver Enjoyable Awkward Comedy

In doing research for this review, I stumbled upon something pretty nifty about the Between Two Ferns web-series on Funny or Die starring Zach Galifianakis that Between Two Ferns: The Movie is based on. Between Two Ferns actually predates the release of Galifianakis' big break in The Hangover! I had always thought his role in that feature had paved the way for him to headline a comedy series but in actuality, Between Two Ferns premiered about a year-and-a-half prior to the Todd Phillips directorial effort that would change the career of Galifianakis forever. Well over a decade after its premiere, Between Two Ferns makes the transition to the world of feature-film narratives with Between Two Ferns: The Movie.

North Texas Film Festival 2019: Re-Animator Is Brazenly Weird Creepy Horror Fare And That's A Compliment

Don't bring things back to the dead. If I've learned anything from horror movies, beyond the importance of not going to that creepy campground on the tenth anniversary of the night all those counselors died, it's that trying to bring people back from the dead is a recipe for inevitable disaster. Ever since the days of Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein novel, scientists meddling in the process of resurrecting the deceased has always resulted in tragedy rather than Nobel Peace prizes. Nobody seems to realize this in the world of movie scientists but at least their inability to learn yields some fun movies like Re-Animator.

North Texas Film Festival 2019: Dolemite May Be Bad But Dolemite Is My Name Is Great

The era of Blaxploitation cinema brought out a number of iconic fictional figures ranging from Shaft and Sweetback. Among that group is Dolemite, who wasn't always a figure of the silver screen. The figure of Dolemite started out as a live comedy personality crafted by Rudy Ray Moore (Eddie Murphy). Moore was a record store employee on the lookout for his big breakthrough all sorts of creative avenues, all of them leading down to dead end's. Then, he got a brilliant idea. He took slave jokes told by local homeless men, polished and refined them and would proceed to tell them to crowds as a new kind of stand-up comedy routine through a boisterous and fully confident fictional personality entitled Dolemite.

North Texas Film Festival Red Carpet Day Three Highlights

A card on the red carpet indicating where Douglas Laman of the Land of the Nerds should stand

On September 26, 2019, the first-ever North Texas Film Festival got underway at the Cinemark West Plano with a red carpet ceremony and each subsequent day of the festival has had its own red carpet full of fascinating figures! Yours truly was on the scene for the third day of the festival to do some interviews, snap some pictures and take in all the sights & sounds of this red carpet!

The Difficulties of Filmmaking Are On Full Display In Lost in La Mancha

Filmmaking is a tough business. Getting any film off the ground is a tricky affair nothing short of a miracle. If problems aren't arising because of difficulting securing finances, there are issues with schedules, securing equipment, getting costumes ready, the challenges are endless. Whether you're doing a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie or a scrappy short film in your backyard, getting a film put together is an immense undertaking and nobody knows that better than Terry Gilliam. The acclaimed director has made a number of beloved motion pictures, but a number of his prospective movies never managed to get off the ground, or, in the case of a 2000 version of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, started filming only to never get finished.

North Texas Film Festival 2019: Clemency Provides One of the Best and Most Harrowing Movies of 2019

Warden Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard) is surrounded by death. In her time as the Warden of her all-male prison, she's overseen the execution of twelve different human beings, the most recent of which went horribly awry. Williams maintains her composure on the outside to a steely degree, she's convinced she's got to. But on the inside, she's shaken up, visions of that execution chamber float into her brain during the day and haunt her nightmares. The detached emotional state she uses to cope with her employment is starting to test her marriage to Jonathan (Wendell Pierce) and is going into overdrive with the impending execution of Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodge), a man who's been on death row for 15 years for a crime he maintains he did not commit.

North Texas Film Festival Red Carpet Day Two Highlights

A card on the red carpet indicating where Douglas Laman of the Land of the Nerds should stand

On September 26, 2019, the first-ever North Texas Film Festival got underway at the Cinemark West Plano with a red carpet ceremony! Yours truly was on the scene for the second day of the festival to do some interviews, snap some pictures and take in all the sights & sounds of this red carpet!

North Texas Film Festival 2019: The Laundromat Is Expansive To A Fault

Where has all the money gone? That's what Ellen Martin (Meryl Streep) wants to know. She just lost her husband in a tragic accident on a tour guide boat and in the wake of such a miserable turn of events has been informed that the company behind the boat her significant other perished on has lousy insurance that won't be giving her any kind of pay-out to help soothe her turmoil. Who could be behind such a scam? Well, that would be Jurgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramon Fonseca (Antonio Banderas), two men running an insurance company that operates numerous shell companies that allow the wealthiest people on the planet to keep their money secure and free of being taxed. It benefits the powerful but for everyday individuals like Ellen Martin, it only produces nightmares.

NTXFFestival Red Carpet Day One Highlights

A card on the red carpet indicating where Douglas Laman of the Land of the Nerds should stand

On September 26, 2019, the first-ever North Texas Film Festival got underway at the Cinemark West Plano with a red carpet ceremony! Yours truly was on the scene to do some interviews, snap some pictures and take in the folks who stopped on by to kick off this festival!

In Laman's Terms: Ranking Every Single DreamWorks Animation Movies From Worst to Best (PART TWO)

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

This past Tuesday, I began ranking all of the DreamWorks Animation movies from worst to best. With the 18 worst features from the studio out of the way, let's move onto the top 18 movies ever from DreamWorks Animation, including their best movie of all-time.

Douglas Laman Is Headed To The North Texas Film Festival!

Get ready folks, Douglas Laman is headed to the very first North Texas Film Festival! I'll be there at this new film festival on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night not only seeing movies like The Laundromat and Dolemite Is My Name, but I'll also be on the red carpet interviewing people! This will be my very first time on any red carpet in any capacity, so I'm very excited to dive right into this new endeavor! Keep an eye out for my coverage on the films and celebrities at this festival in the next few days, there'll be plenty to talk about!

In Laman's Terms: Ranking Every Single DreamWorks Animation Movies From Worst to Best (PART ONE)

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Twenty-one years after releasing their first movie, DreamWorks Animation is a household name for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it's because your kids love their movies. Perhaps it's because you have nostalgia for the likes of The Road to El Dorado and Shrek. Perhaps you hate how so many DreamWorks characters make the same facial expression. Perhaps you're just a Bee Movie Meme connoisseur. Whatever the reason, we all know about DreamWorks Animation, but how often do we actually contemplate the studios library of titles? The folks at this animation studio have produced thirty-six movies over the last twenty-one years and over the course of two In Laman's Terms editorial columns this week, I'll be ranking all of these films from worst to best.

Get ready to blare All-Star and for an avalanche of celebrity voice-over performances, we're about to dive into the DreamWorks Animation library. Let's start with the studios worst title, which could only be...

Isabelle Huppert Excels In The Lead Role of Elle

CW: Discussions of Sexual Assault

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron Doesn't Trust Either Its Audience or Animation Enough

From the get-go, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron struck me as an attempt to do a Western version of Bambi. This was mainly because Spirit was also a tale of relatively non-anthropomorphized animals wandering around in the woodlands with a darker tone. Whereas Bambi committed to its darker tone (oh, did it ever), Spirit has trouble actually letting its more somber elements get executed properly. Nobody's expecting an animated kids movies from DreamWorks to achieve the bleakness of a Robert Bresson movie, but Spirit constantly struggles to achieve effective moments of poignancy because it never allows those moments to be as restrained as they should be. It constantly beats you over the head with its intent instead of letting the emotions sweep over you.

Good Boys Is A Good Raunchy Comedy

Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams) and Thor (Brady Noon) are the best of friends. This trio of sixth-graders, the self-proclaimed Beanbag Boys, do everything together and that includes a super-important party where Max will have a chance to kiss his crush. Problem is, he and his two buddies have no idea how to kiss. Their attempts to learn how to kiss soon involve using a drone that Max's Dad owns to spy on Max's neighbor. From there, a whole series of predicaments unfold for these best buddies involving drugs, crossing a Highway and serious injuries that put them way out of their depth.

Ad Astra Takes Brad Pitt On A Thoughtful Voyage To Space

Judging by the basic plot and tone of Ad Astra, it appears that writer/director James Gray is a big fan of both Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Can you blame him? Both of those movies are, like any Lizzo album, flat-out excellent. Taking the story structure of Apocalypse Now concerning an internally tormented man making a trek to a mysterious legendary figure isolated from general society and then mixing it with the slow-paced cosmic aesthetic of 2001: A Space Odyssey is already an interesting framework for a somber exploration of Astronaut Brad Pitt's daddy issues. Much like how last weekends Hustlers used a clear love for Scorsese to make something new, so too does Ad Astra take two beloved films from decades past as a springboard for its own distinct feature film.

Douglas Laman Has A Patreon!

Do you like what you see on Land of the Nerds? Enjoy those weekly In Laman's Terms columns? If so, maybe consider donating to Douglas Laman's Patreon? Land of the Nerds will always be free to access and ad-free, no worries about that, that's not changing. But if you just wanna show some love towards the person writing the content here through a Patreon donation, well, I wouldn't say no to that! There's some nifty stuff in store if you do donate, including glimpses into future Land of the Nerds essays and, for all of those who donate $10 a month, you can choose a movie a month for me to review!

The power is in your hands, all you've gotta do is become a Douglas Laman donor on Patreon!

Ash is Purest White's Cmaerawork and Lead Performance Make Good Use of The Passage of Time

YMCA is a go-to music staple in movies, but it's usually used for comedic purposes, like as a way to close out Despicable Me 2 with a requisite animated movie dance party. I totally wasn't expecting it to show up in a dark drama like Ash is Purest White but not only does it make an appearance here, it's utilized in a very thought-provoking manner. At first, it's simply used as a tune playing in a club that the corrupt lead characters are partying at, just a familiar jaunty song for the main players of Ash is Purest White to dance to. But then portions of the song are played over footage of ragged-looking citizens in despair. YMCA is a song about the downtrodden having "...a place you can go..." when you have nothing else, so to have this peppy tune play over these shots of the marginalized in such dehumanizing conditions proves to be appropriately unsettling.

Brittany Runs a Marathon Stumbles Visually But Soars Thematically

One of the most interesting parts about Brittany Runs a Marathon is how differently it approaches the topic of changing one's life and habits compared to typical American cinema. The default for depicting personal growth in mainstream filmmaking is typically to use a montage to flash through a character getting their stuff together and changing their life for the better. Now, I love a good montage, but that shouldn't be the only way we depict people tackling the daunting prospect of improving their lives. Brittany Runs a Marathon goes for a different, more realistic approach that emphasizes little steps taken each day add up to change over time, one of a number thoughtful unique traits that can be found in this comedy/drama.

In Laman's Terms: A MoviePass Memorial

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

MoviePass is not surely alive, roaring like a lion

It's merely dead.

Peacock Flaunts Its Colors...And Original DreamWorks Animation Movies

Today, we get some details on what everybody was craving...a brand new streaming service! This time around, it was NBCUniversal's time to shine as they finally showed off details regarding their new streaming service, which is officially called. Peacock. Yes, that's the actual name. In announcing its original content today, most of the revelations were TV-oriented, specifically around planned reboots of Punky Brewster and Saved by the Bell. But one interesting nugget in here is that, like most of these new streaming services, there will be original films on this service and they'll be provided by movie studios the NBCUNiversal company owns. The three studios providing original contents are Universal (Hmmmmm, is this where The Hunt goes?), Focus Features and, most interestingly, DreamWorks Animation. 

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote Is Messy But Wistfully Thoughtful

Sometimes, myths can become larger than the men they're about and the same is true of certain films, especially when they're films like The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. This Terry Gilliam directorial effort has been through hell and back in its trek to the big screen with numerous difficulties emerging preventing it from becoming a finished film. A version of this project even started filming at the turn of century with Johnny Depp in the lead role before the plug eventually got pulled. For so long, it seemed like this endeavor was doomed to be just a legend of filmmaking gone awry rather than an actual movie. However, in April 2019, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote finally got released to theaters! It's real! It's an actual thing you can watch!

The We Love to Watch Podcast Brings The All-Star's To Night of The Living Dead

You know a podcast episode is gonna be good when it kicks off with Smash Mouth's All-Star and that's especially true of the newest episode of We Love to Watch, which focuses on Night of the Living Dead. Usually, the format of the We Love to Watch focuses on the two hosts (Aaron Armstrong & Peter Moran) talking about a movie with a single guest but Aaron Armstrong pulls out all the stops for this particular episode, which includes a whole bunch of guests, including yours truly, Douglas Laman. As noted in the episode itself, this is the "perfect" episode for people who've never listened to the show before!

If you're looking for some laughs and thoughtful looks at George A. Romero's iconic horror film, listen to it below and make sure to check out the other We Love to Watch episodes on Soundcloud and their official website!

Writer/Director Lorene Scafaria and Jennifer Lopez Excel In The Wildly Imaginative Hustlers

Dorothy (Constance Wu) just wants the bare essentials. She just wants to take care of her grandmother (Wai Ching Ho) and not live out on the street. To get the money for these necessities, she works as a dancer at a strip club alongside Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), the most talented dancer in the place. The two of them hit it off as fast friends and begin making a lot of money, particularly from clients who are also wealthy Wall Street brokers. For a little while there, everything is perfect. But once the 2008 financial crisis hits, the club is hit with money woes while Dorothy also leaves the profession to take care of her newborn kid. After a few years, Dorothy's financial troubles return worse than ever. Where is she gonna get the cash she needs? Well, an impromptu reunion with Ramona delivers a possible solution as Ramona reveals she's got a new scam brewing involving drugging Wall Street tycoons and then taking thousands from their bank accounts.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Is Riveting Television

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance may be the ideal form of bringing back a beloved property in a modern-day reboot/continuation. A Netflix TV show prequel to the 1982 Jim Henson/Frank Oz directorial effort The Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance takes place thousands of years before the events of the original movie. This extensive amount of time in between the two stories allows the saga of Age of Resistance to really stand on its own. Though they take place on the same planet (Thra) and share some characters, Age of Resistance will work just fine for newcomers and is interested in telling a good story and pushing the boundaries of puppetry-based filmmaking rather than just relying exclusively on callbacks to the original Dark Crystal movie.

In Laman's Terms: I Am Enough And So Are You

An image from Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, one of my favorite movies, that fits this headline beautifully.

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

One of the most unexpected parts about the release of It Chapter Two is how it's led me to reflect on how much I've grown as a person since the release of the first It movie. In the two years between the two Pennywise movies, I've managed to direct a read-through of a play I've written, travel on my own for the first time and get my first ever paid writing gig, among other accomplishments. It's not long ago that I was wondering if I would ever be able to drive an automobile and now I've got my very own car and driver's license. All of that in just the two-year span in between two movie adaptations of a single Stephen King novel.

Holiday Is Hard To Watch But Extremely Well-Made

CW: Discussions of Sexual assault follow

If you took a quick glimpse of Sascha (Victoria Carmen Sonne) basking in the sun in a fancy bikini on a lavish boat, you'd presume that she's living the ideal luxurious life. But Holiday makes it clear from the outset with a scene depicting one of her boyfriend's associated hitting her that her life is way more harrowing than that. Sascha is trapped in an abusive relationship with gangster Michael (Lai Yde) and writer/director Isabella Elkof is exploring her psyche and perspective during this relationship all throughout Holiday. This is not a story with a happy ending of a person escaping an abusive relationship, rather, it's a tale about the messy explanations for how and why the cycle of abuse continues onward.

It Chapter Two Ends The Pennywise Saga On An Underwhelming Note

It's been thirty years since the events of the first It movie. All the members of the Loser's Club have grown up and gone their separate ways outside of their hometown of Derry, Maine. Well, all of them except for Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa), who stayed behind to do research on how to definitively kill Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgard). When it becomes clear that Pennywise has risen from his slumber and devour people once again, it's time for Mike to turn on the Loser's-Signal and call the other members of the Loser's Club home. Soon, Beverly (Jessica Chastain), Bill (James McAvoy), Ben (Jay Ryan), Richie (Bill Hader) and Eddie (James Ransone) have all reunited with Mike in Derry to figure out how to defeat Pennywise., though this clown isn't going down without a fight.

Fast Color Is A Thoughtful New Take On Superhero Storytelling

MILD SPOILERS FOR FAST COLOR FOLLOW

Boy, I've been waiting to see Fast Color for quite a while now. Ever since it premiered at the South-by-Southwest Festival in March 2018, I've been eagerly awaiting the chance to see it. Alas, thanks to Lionsgate dumping this one in its tiny theatrical release, I’ve had to wait 18 whole months since its SXSW premiere to see it! Admittedly, this is the very definition of a First World Problem, but it's still been aggravating to have to wait so long to get a chance to see this movie solely because Lionsgate bungled its theatrical release so badly.  When it comes to movies as good as Fast Color, though, such a wait becomes immaterial, I'm just glad I finally got to see this Julia Hart directorial effort that managed to exceed my lofty expectations!

A Review of Downton Abbey: The Movie From Someone Whose Never Seen Downton Abbey

I rarely keep up with popular television shows. I still haven't watched The Sopranos, let alone The Boys, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I haven't watched the beloved TV show Downton Abbey yet. Of course, I'm well aware of the program's existence and certain characters on it, it's impossible to be ignorant of a show that gets this popular. But for the most part, me and the characters on Downton Abbey have been two boats that get close to each other but never directly meet. That changed with the theatrical feature film Downton Abbey, which takes the characters of the PBS show and takes them to the big screen in an adventure that I watched despite not having any prior exposure to the residents of the titular residence.

Luce Is Morally Complex And Fascinating Fare

The titular lead character of Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is an ideal High School student. The adopted son of Amy (Naomi Watts) and Peter Edgar (Tim Roth) is in every extracurricular you can think of, he's a great speaker, he gets along equally well with his fellow students as he does with his teachers. Well, most of his teachers at least. Luce doesn't really get along well with his English teacher, Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer). Up to this point, Luce's just been mildly annoyed with his teacher. But things take a turn for the worse when Wilson calls Amy into her classroom to inform her that her son has written an extremely disturbing and violent essay and has also been keeping illegal fireworks in his locker.

Pleasantville Is An Impressive Showcase For Effective Satire, Memorable Visuals And Jeff Daniels

It's so much fun to go in totally cold into a first-time watch of a movie and become totally enchanted by discovering where exactly that movie is going. Movie marketing can be so spoiler-heavy, it's totally a wonder when the secrets and plot outline of a movie remain a mystery, especially when it's twenty-one-years-old like Pleasantville! The directorial debut of Gary Ross, I was aware of this movie being a star vehicle for Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon and that it was done in black-and-white but other than that, the concrete details of the production remained a mystery to me. This meant my first-time-viewing of Pleasantville turned out to be such a delightful experience as I got to unearth all the joys this movie has to offer!

Don't Give The Bird To A Solid Political Thriller Like Three Days of the Condor

You ever feel like you just missed something important at your job? Like, maybe you turned your back for two seconds to help a customer and you suddenly missed some important instructions or orders from your boss? Boy does Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) know that feeling. He works for a C.I.A. branch that's dedicated to looking over reading materials (like novels) to see if they overlap with actual secret C.I.A. plans. It's not glamorous, but it's a living. Anywho, one day he goes out to a diner around the corner to pick up lunch for his co-workers and comes back to discover that everybody in his office has been viciously murdered by unknown enemy forces.

Cast Your Vote For Alexander Payne's Best Move, Election

Matthew Broderick is an actor of stage and screen known for playing nice protagonists that your average moviegoer can easily root for. It's a trait of his that worked so well in Ferris Bueller's Day Off that people are still wearing "Save Ferris" T-Shirts all these years lost while the likes of The Lion King and Torch Song Trilogy also made strong use of his endearing nature. Yes, Broderick is talented at playing likable individuals but as Jimmy Stewart showed multiple times in his career, sometimes there's nothing more fun to watch than actors known for playing nice people going full-on creepy asshole. Broderick got to flex those kinds of antagonistic muscles with Alexander Payne's 1999 motion picture Election.

Claire Denis Creates A Quietly Terrifying Voyage Into Space With High Life

High Life opens with its lead character, Monte (Robert Pattinson), doing some repairs on the exterior of the spacecraft he and his daughter are traveling in. During this process, he accidentally loses grip of a tool that proceeds to float off into the void of space. As both he and the viewer watch this tool escape his grasp, High Life's way of depicting the vastness of space is made clear. In this film, the terrifying vastness of space is treated bluntly, only towards the end of the movie do more traditional grandiose depictions of the cosmos emerge. For much of its runtime, space is depicted as something simple: endless blackness that spells doom for all that enter it. It's a terrifying domain made all the eerier by the frank way Claire Denis films space, she frames High Life's characters against this empty void with no pomp, no circumstance.

The Triplets of Belleville Is A Rallying Cry For The Virtues of Hand-Drawn Animation

I've always carried a deep affinity for hand-drawn animation. I remember being the one eight-year-old on the planet who was fervently following the closure of Disney's hand-drawn animation units in 2004 and experiencing immense rage over the artform being shoved aside in the U.S. Just normal adolescent angst. Anywho, I've carried that passion for this particular artform well into adulthood and such a passion only increased in intensity thanks to a trio of first-time watches over the summer of 2019. Experiencing The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, Fantastic Planet and the subject of this review The Triplets of Belleville for the first time over the span of a few months made me further appreciate all the wonders hand-drawn animation can achieve that no other artform can quite replicate.

In Laman's Terms: Looking Back At The Summer 2019 Box Office

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Time just keeps on passing by relentlessly and that means Summer 2019 is already finished. This also means that the winners, losers and everything in between of the Summer 2019 domestic box office has been revealed. Back in April 2019, I wrote down my predictions for what I thought would be the ten biggest movies of Summer 2019 and now it's time to see how wrong (and maybe sometimes even kind of right) I was! Strap in folks, let's look at what ended up being the ten biggest movies of Summer 2019!

Let's start with the biggest film of the summer...

All Hail The Visually Stunning Comedy But I'm A Cheerleader

The only real downside to watching But I'm a Cheerleader for the first time is stumbling onto the initial reviews for the film where seemingly everyone but Roger Ebert (God bless him) just seemed to totally miss the point of the film. Most aggravating among these reviews is a common refrain from primarily heterosexual reviewers about how the film is just "preaching to the choir" and doesn't do enough to appeal to viewers who are against the LGBTQA+ community. The idea that art about members of an oppressed community of human beings is obligated to make an effort to reach out to privileged populations suppressing said oppressed communities is staggeringly stupid. The humanity of LGBTQA+ people is not some debate where "both sides have a point" like a debate over Star Wars movies, a film like But I'm A Cheerleader is not lesser than because it decides to exclusively focus on queer characters and their struggles.