Hey there, my name is Jonathan Leiter: also known as, FilmmakerJ
I’m a filmmaker, just recently graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), and am moving into the working world of film and television this coming Fall. As a filmmaker, I have always had a fondness for hundreds of different films, and have discovered many strange, unique, and underrated ones that I’d like to share with others. But I also want to offer something that other reviewers and writers won’t necessarily do: emotional honesty. Meaning that not only will you get the critical and technical angle, but you’ll also get my own, very personal emotional reactions based on the films that I cover, as many of my reviews cover films that were of special meaning to me when I was growing up.
With that said, I’d like to welcome you to the Cinema Warehouse: where we specialize in Animated Features, Japanese Anime, Sci-fi and Fantasy, and all manner of weird and bizarre titles. The weirder the better. And of course when one wants to talk about the weird and bizarre, it almost always involves the discussion of the rare, the obscure, and the underrated: which is something I absolutely love about many of the films I cover. They may not be masterpieces, and they may not always be entirely good, but something about each of the films that I cover makes it worthy of discussion for one reason or another. It could be style, it could be story or premise, it could be music, or it could even be a single scene that stuck out above the rest of the film.
While you’re here, you may notice that the majority of my reviews center on animated titles. This is no accident, as one of my biggest passions is all things animation. I do plan to cover certain live-action titles, especially those dating from the 1960s through the 80s and 90s, and particularly independent features. But I choose to write when the inspiration strikes me, and many times that can lead to a discussion about a title that I never even thought I’d cover, or it can lead to yet another animated film that I stumbled across while looking around on IMDB. So, for now, animation will remain the prime focus of this blog.
One of my most important goals here is to provide information for, and personal insight into the titles and series that I cover, that no other blog or website can provide. In fact, there are often many obscure titles, especially those from Japan, that have very little descriptive info written about them in English, and no easy way to corroborate details.. There are also certain large groups of titles, such as listings of all of the works of a particular studio or all the titles of a particular franchise, that are not covered fully and may not contain every related item. And so for those of you looking to learn all that they can, it can be very frustrating to find a definitive list or resource. Furthermore, I have been fortunate enough to stumble across many interesting connections between films and their creators: such as manga artist, Osamu Tezuka, being inspired by Betty Boop and Bambi to create the look for Astro Boy, or the fact that Tezuka was also asked by Stanly Kubrick to direct 2001 before taking on the project fully himself. And so, in the style of 6-Degrees of Kevin Bacon; I will also do my best to offer unusual and fascinating connection and relationship trivia to you as well.
Finally, I do not intend for this blog to be entirely formal. As I have stated, it is by-and-large a place of personal expression for me as well as an informative one for you. Meaning that not only will I try to describe the artistic merit, technical achievements, and writing quality of any given film; but I will also freely express my personal experience and emotions related to it. Because many of the films I will cover will be films that I grew up with, and some of them were seminal to who I am today.
I hope you will enjoy your time here.
And please feel free to suggest any film, tv series, or even video game that you might like to see me cover in the future. Thank you so much.