About

Who are you? And what is this?

I'm Austin! Nice to meet you.

I've never been content to think of movies as escapist entertainment. Sure, I enjoy my fair share of big dumb action flicks. But for a movie to really resonate, there must be some intent, something for it to "say", some justification for its existence. I approach movies first and foremost as an art form, and thus as having incredible power. Sometimes it's the power to change the world, sometimes it's to change your life, sometimes it's just to change your day. It's a somewhat romantic notion in an age of streaming and prestige television, I know. But it's proven to be true many times throughout the life of the medium. I'm convinced that potency is still there, it just takes special filmmakers to deploy it.

I believe any movie in any genre aimed at any audience can be great. Children's movies can be smart, action movies can be poignant, and teen movies can teach adults a lot about themselves. Thus, I never accept the idea of fully checking your brain at the door: a truly good movie will make you think on some dimension, even if it's just about the style or the comedy or the aesthetics.

To that end, I try to go into a fair degree of depth in my reviews, pulling apart all the movie's ideas and themes and execution while still discussing its narrative and performances. My goal is to give you a sense of the movie more than to tell you whether or not you should like it. Think of my reviews as a guide, as one perspective on how to approach the film, rather than simply saying thumbs up or thumbs down (no shade on Siskel and Ebert).

I almost exclusively review new US releases, always spoiler-free. I also put together year end lists, film festival wrap-ups, Oscars predictions, and have plans for some more essay-like posts on occasion.

If you're interested in my thoughts on non new releases, you can check out my film dairy on Letterboxd, where I track everything I watch. I aim to capture some thoughts on everything, albeit more informal and less thorough than here.

You can also email me at takeemtothemoviesaustin@gmail.com.

What makes you qualified to review movies?

Passion.

Admittedly, I took a slightly unorthodox path to being a cinephile. I'm a fairly recent devotee, really only becoming a voracious viewer in 2020. I was a fan before that, of course. Hell, I fell in love with Darren Aronofsky and Charlie Kaufman in high school, Dark City and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and Moulin Rouge! in college, and saw most of the MCU movies in theaters through Avengers: Endgame. I even listened to three or four movie podcasts just because I found the analysis and comparisons to other movies fascinating. Yet that never turned into movie watching.

It took my local, non-profit, indie theater setting up a virtual cinema early in the COVID-19 pandemic to jolt my obsession awake. Since then, I've ramped up my movie watching, with a goal of averaging a feature a day over the course of the each year, from all eras and genres and countries. Of course, especially having started so late, the vast majority of what I've seen is from the 21st century, meaning I have a number of annoying blind spots, classics I still haven't seen. But I'm slowly filling in those gaps.

Alright, what's the deal with the name?

The short version is that it's a paraphrase of the line "Take 'em to Missouri, Matt!" from Red River.

The longer version is that I'm friends with the executive director of Red River Theaters, that indie cinema I mentioned earlier. We were talking about me writing a column for the site at one point, so I threw out a bunch of names. I wanted at least one option to be connected to the inspiration for the theater's name, so I pulled up its quote page, and that line jumped out. She preferred another option, so I set it aside. When the column never got going, I decided to turn my excitement into this site, using one of the discarded column names for its title.