Ben Trout, Neighbor

Once upon a time, shortly after the light had gone out of pretty standard high school and college newspaper stints, Ben Trout had a website.

Fiercely snobbish, clumsily verbose and, often, contradictory, I learned a great deal about myself while deconstructing films on this seldom viewed but obsessively updated web space.

Though I maintained it through 2009, its humble beginnings were nothing if not foolhardy and ambitious: In addition to repertory and repeat viewings, I decided the fate of 200+ new releases for nearly four years straight. After that, I could articulate my own taste better and found myself able to filter my input - with what I considered a Herculean measure of accuracy - down to the nubbins.