Racism and identity in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman
BlacKkKlansman, directed by Spike Lee, is more than a film about racism and the civil rights struggle. It is a sociopolitical commentary on America then and now. Based on a true story, it follows Ron Stallworth, the first African-American police officer in Colorado Springs, as he infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan — and through that […]
Rocketman: how relationships shaped Elton John’s creativity
Elton John’s life, as told in Rocketman, is a story about love, friendship and creative output — and about how tightly the three are wound together. Beyond the musical talent, what the film keeps returning to is that his relationships shaped both his career and the way he wrote. It is worth saying what kind […]
Personal branding in a career crisis: Rick Dalton
In Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Rick Dalton is more than a fading star of the studio era. He is a man in crisis, caught by an industry that has moved on without him. Played by Leonardo DiCaprio, his situation is an unusually clear case study in personal branding — what happens […]
Us: the psychological double as horror
Us, a thriller that behaves like horror, is Jordan Peele’s second film after Get Out. Like that one, it has generated a great many theories online. What follows is our own reading — and a theory is by definition a point of view, not a solution. The conscious in permanent conflict with the unconscious The […]
Non-verbal communication at work, seen through Allied
In Allied, Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) and Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard) are two spies in the Second World War, working in a setting where trust is both essential and nearly impossible. They share a mission and a relationship, and they operate in a world of suspicion and double meaning where a gesture, a look or […]
Negotiation strategies from Don Vito Corleone
In The Godfather, Don Vito Corleone is a strategist before he is anything else. The character is both ruthless and unusually attentive to people, and that combination is what makes his negotiating method worth examining — with the obvious caveat that the setting is criminal and the method is not. Build trust before you need […]
Back to the Future: time as we wish it were
Almost everyone has, at some point, wanted to travel in time — to see the past, glimpse the future, or quietly correct one decision. Back to the Future is built entirely on that wish, and it handles time in a deliberately unstable way. A short philosophical detour One of the first ideas encountered in a […]
Forrest Gump and the anatomy of good storytelling
Storytelling is how complicated ideas become simple enough to remember. It works in film, in advertising and in management for the same reason: a structured narrative carries meaning that a list of facts does not. Forrest Gump is a useful case study because it builds an extraordinary life out of entirely ordinary parts — and […]
McDonald’s: the empire that stayed in everyone’s head
Whether you like it or not, McDonald’s is in your head. And there is almost certainly one near you. This is a short account of how that happened, and a companion to the documentary Big Mac: Inside the McDonald’s Empire, available on e-dutainment. An electric start Back to 1937. The McDonald brothers open a hot […]
Louie Zamperini: mental strength in Unbroken
Unbroken is a war film, but it is first the true story of an Olympic athlete. Louie Zamperini’s life is one of the clearest illustrations of what people mean by mental strength — and of how vague that phrase usually is. Angelina Jolie directed it from Laura Hillenbrand’s book, and the structure is deliberate: the […]