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coleman spilde

@colemanspilde

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I am just a guy who does a lot of stuff. senior culture writer and film critic @salonofficial.

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personal news! next week i’m joining the culture team @salonofficial as a senior staff writer, where i’ll be tightening the scope of my criticism and analysis primarily to film. i’m so grateful and even more excited to keep writing with empathy and wit about my favorite art form in the world.

i’ll be covering culture at large along the way (i’m nosy!) but the opportunity to explore, explode, and expand cinema is a dream come true. i’m going to bring you pieces that will make you think, laugh, fume, smile, and maybe even cry, right here: https://www.salon.com/writer/coleman-spilde 🖤

see you at the movies! by @colemanspilde

˚✧˳ there’s no danger in the fantasy! ˚✧˳ by @colemanspilde

Wow woah ok I’ve been nominated for three National Arts & Entertainment Journalism awards by the LA Press Club, for three stories that are close to my heart. I’m gonna get a little emotional about it right now so buckle up!

Since I was a kid, I’ve experienced feelings so big I don’t know what to do with them. For a long time, I invested those emotions into places that weren’t good for me: anxiety, codependency, alcohol abuse — all the fun ones! I spent so much time searching for a place to put my feelings that I never stopped to feel them, much less realize that the outlet I needed was in front of me in a word processor with the cursor blinking.

In writing, I quickly understood that the process not only helped me make sense of the experience of being alive, but forced me to ask new questions about that experience, too. That was the big gift: more curiosity, more love, more desire. It is childlike in a way that moves me deeply, just understanding that imagination and learning never stops, and creation is ongoing, forever.

I’m truly honored to be recognized for a very special story I wrote: “Not the last picture show: A small-town theater brings hope to the heartland.” The piece took me home to North Dakota, where I spent hours at my hometown movie theater, The Grand, and its sister theater, The Mayer — a single-screen cinema playing movies to wonderful residents of the tiny surrounding towns, who generously lent me their time for the story. It’s a piece about film, family, hope, fear, loss, and determination, all the stuff that makes up a life. It’s a defining story in my career, which still feels like a crazy thing to label what I’m so lucky to do. (Selfishly…hope I win for it!!!!)

I’m also touched to be nominated for a piece I wrote about love in ‘When Harry Met Sally’ in the wake of Rob Reiner’s tragic death, as well as a piece about ‘The Drama’ and discomfort. Both these stories are as much a part of me as the one I began in my hometown.

Congratulations to my incredible co-nominees and colleagues: Melanie, Amanda, Ashlie, and Caryn. Thank you to Hanh, Andrew, Erin, Kelly, Natalie, and Joseph, as well as James, Connor, Allegra, Sammi, and my family <3 by @colemanspilde

Like this post if you want to see me succeed in every everything I put my mind to! by @colemanspilde

Wrote about ‘You Can See Everything’ and the futile desire to be understood, @salonofficial.

Graphic illustration by me. by @colemanspilde

My little treasure trove from last sunday’s @slayyyter show. watching slayyyter explode into an entirely new stratosphere over the last year and some change has been impossibly gratifying after spending so long preaching the gospel of Miss YYY to deaf ears. from the moment I heard “Alone” in late 2018, I heard personality, rage, creativity, sparks, defiance, courage, and taste. Seeing WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA—her most clear-eyed, adventurous, and exciting work yet (lil more in my blurb for Salon’s best of 2026 so far list; last slide)—greeted with the reception that it deserves and so much more is immensely heartening. Not only is Slayyyter an incredible artist and musician, but she does everything by hand and organically, sewing tour costumes and thrifting in small-towns and directing her videos with her team of close friends and collaborators, adding punk flair to polished pop that’s been there through all her releases, but certainly it’s most prominent here. A joy to see in an increasingly artless world. I see soooo much of my teenage years in this album’s Midwestern tweakerella iPod glam sonic palette and visual aesthetic. I adore her expressive visions of teenage yearning, staring out the window of the front seat of the car and imagining a world built around whatever song was playing on the radio.

Invest time in seeking out new (or new to you) artists in any medium, and approach their work with as open of a mind as you possibly can. You might find something you love, then you get the reward of championing their creative growth through every stage of their career and it will feed your soul. Feel art and talk about it with your friends and exchange ideas and scream songs together. Remember the joy of those moments.

Anyway, realized during this show my phone is now old enough that its video footage looks totally archaic next to the camera capabilities of the newer models. I love it. I wish it looked even worse. Worst phone in America. #LetsAllShootOurPhones by @colemanspilde

Wrote about ‘Bucking Fastard’ out of #NYFF. Werner Herzog traces the thin line between loneliness and codependency with endlessly fascinating, tender introspection. It’s a film I’ll relish revisiting for a long time to come.

(No spoilers, only thoughts and feelings.) I’ve had an eye on ‘Bucking Fastard’ for nearly two years now, and what a thrill to realize nothing could prepare me for what Rooney and Kate Mara have here, courtesy of their natural connection and Herzog’s curious humanist spirit. It’s like watching starts being sewn into the fabric of the universe.

The piece is out now @salonofficial. ‘Bucking Fastard’ is currently seeking distribution. Photos courtesy of Obscured Releasing, graphic illustration by me. by @colemanspilde

13 frames from ‘the reflecting skin’ (1990), dir. philip ridley. autumn’s well underway, and i can’t recommend this daylight-drenched surrealist horror enough.

breathtaking. a new forever favorite. deranged american gothic where every frame sings like a song, in part thanks to nick bicât, whose rapturous string-heavy score soars across philip ridley’s amber waves of grain, spray-painted a brassy andrew wyeth yellow. blue skies that go on for miles, leaving the blight ripping across the fields in plain sight. some sequences of utter, despicable terror and others that are, however briefly, too beautiful for words. an appropriate dichotomy given that, throughout the film, things of natural beauty are heralded as “wonderful” before being killed and shattered and destroyed: frogs, seashells, interiors, innocence, lives. eventually the parts of life that widen our eyes and dilate our pupils slip through our fingers. in the absence of wonder, the soul begins to age faster than the body, creating the appearance of youth and the spirit eternal.

she keeps his sweat in a bottle. by @colemanspilde

Wrote about ‘Primetime,’ a film that attempts to scrutinize sensationalist American media by wading into the same murky territory it’s investigating. While interesting in theory, its execution is bafflingly monotonous and all-too-superficial.

Oppenheim’s style is becoming but ultimately one-note, underserved by an ambitious script w/more ideas than it can balance. Pattinson’s great, but every time he and the film play for laughs, the humor blunts the sharp edges. A have-your-cake-and-comment-on-it-too situation.

Out now @salonofficial. Graphic illustration by me, photo courtesy of A24. by @colemanspilde

If I’m being truly and totally honest I love being alive and cherish every day. by @colemanspilde

“Practical Magic 2,” the sequel to the 1998 film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, hits theaters this weekend. @colemanspilde argues why it was doomed from the start, like every legacy sequel to a cult favorite. by @colemanspilde

Netflix recently released three new original movies — “Don’t Say Good Luck,” “The Whisper Man” and “The Last House.”

Salon’s @colemanspilde watched them all and explains why the streamer champions more content and big names over quality filmmaking. by @colemanspilde