Hey there reader! Excited to have you.

Ever since a young age I’ve loved watching stuff and talking about it, usually in the form of rants to friends. After being encouraged to take those rants and formalize them into reviews by friends and family, I decided to make this site late 2019 and share my thoughts with as many people as I can. I love reading about philosophy, politics, and psychoanalysis so you can expect my content to mention/reference ideas prominent in those fields.

I believe the purpose of reviews are to: introduce people to content they otherwise would not have seen that they would enjoy, offer a perspective on content that would convince someone who dislikes it to give it another chance, and/or help bring up ideas that help a user gain a more thorough appreciation of a work. On top of this, I think that reviews should aim to be as spoiler-free as possible while still giving useful information to the audience. So many attempts at spoiler-free reviews end up regurgitating the same points ad infinitum like “the cinematography is really good and crisp” which helps explain very little.

My site’s review format has been constructed in response to these issues. I spend a long time making sure I reveal nothing outside of details that happen in the first act. That being said, movies wouldn’t be complete without discussing some spoilers, so you’ll notice most reviews have a spoiler section that can be accessed if you have seen the movie and want to see my more developed thoughts.

While I started off as a huge horror fan (as evidence by the huge swath of horror reviews on the site and the horror blurbs on longer aggregate writing pieces/lists on the site), writing reviews has helped me cultivate a love of cinema in general. I’m someone who has no formal training or education in cinema. This is all just a hobby that’s turned into something far more meaningful for myself. It’s only in early 2020 that I eagerly dove into reading about film theory and form along with getting into classical movies by directors such as Hitchcock, Bergman, and Tarkovsky.

I initially started this site to just get my short rants out in an online format. However, as time has gone on and my investment in the site and cinema in general have increased many fold my hope is to create a more conducive and meaningful location for thought and discussion. To all my readers, thanks for the support. Without further ado, welcome to the Critic’s Sanctum.