Whenever I can, I like to revisit the writings of our best film critics. I’ve always felt that there’s much to learn from their work–from their tastes, their writing styles, their viewing habits, their disputes with other critics, even their blind spots. Though I’m more partial to Otis Ferguson, Manny Farber, André Bazin, Roger Leenhardt,…
Category: Film Review
007 Legacies: On NO TIME TO DIE (Fukunaga, 2021)
No Time To Die (2021) is a rare instance in Bond fiction–not just the movies, but the novels, the comics, the TV shows, and the rest–of a narrative that comes to complete closure. That says to viewers or readers: this is The End. James Bond will always “return,” we’ve all come to expect. Not this…
The Parametric Promise of Promising Young Woman (Fennell, 2020)
Promising Young Woman (2020) by first-time director Emerald Fennell is a film that is likely to be discussed and debated for some time to come, and rightly so. Fennell has made a movie with a point. Though not without its nuances, it favors dramatized polemic. It forcefully jogs us from our complacency. It is, in…
You Win Some, You Lose Some: A Dashed-Off Review of Avengers: Endgame (Russos, 2019)
Marvel has come through with a good, B+ outing. Infinity War (2018) remains the better presentation, on the whole–a better balance of things in a better script. Endgame‘s extended “search for the gems” act–let’s start there–really weighs the midsection down. I was actually rather surprised how quickly the search lost its luster. Despite the quipped-y-quipping…
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE FALLOUT (McQuarrie, 2018): Who needs “art”?
Mission: Impossible Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018) isn’t about anything but itself. It’s 120 years’ worth of movie contrivances jammed so tight into a 147-minute runtime that there’s barely room for anything “artful.” And it’s utterly brilliant. What sorts of contrivances? You name it. Just of the action/suspense/spy variety: cliffhangers (from the figurative to the very literal,…
The Shape of Water (del Toro, 2017): Sink and Swim
The Shape of Water is not Guillermo del Toro’s best. The premise is fetching, and the nostalgic period elements catch the eye–Del Toro is nothing if not a world-(re)builder–, but the romance feels at least to me oddly flat, despite the honesty and integrity of Sally Hawkins’ performance. There are also some serious representation problems….
Marvel Gets It (Finally): THOR: RAGNAROK (Waititi, 2017)
Thor: Ragnarok shoots right to the top of all MCU releases. How so? It has, dare I say it, a good script. Sure, the screenwriters lean on slapstick in virtually every scene of the first two acts. Even Kate Blanchett’s forced to lumber through some silly word-play–mercifully, for only a few brief interludes. But unlike Guardians…
A Crying Shame: A Thought or Two About The Florida Project (Baker, 2017) and Its Ending
Especially in light of its effort at authenticity, The Florida Project‘s climax is pure hokum. It’s clear that the filmmakers wrote themselves into a corner and had no idea how to get out. No, I am not just referring to the smartphone-shot and supposedly transcendent flight to DisneyWorld, although that might have been bad enough…
Prequels + 1: My Take on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
I haven’t posted my thoughts on recent releases for some time. Here begins my effort to play catch-up! * * * Clearly the worst of the Disney-era Star Wars movies, The Last Jedi is a crazy quilt stitched together from a half-dozen Big Moments that are bound to become iconic and a stack of bad…
Sleuths in Space: Valerian–and Laureline!–and the City of a Thousand Planets (Besson, 2017)
Luc Besson has made his first James Bond film. Well, in a manner of speaking. His source material, the Franco-Belgian serialized comic Valérian et Laureline (1967-2010), was created in the mid-1960s, when the Connery Bond films were gangbusters at the box office and Eurospy thrillers, often little more than cheaply produced Bond rip-offs, were sweeping across Europe (Fig….
Moving Patterns 