I’m torn. On the one hand, Amityville Dollhouse is the worst motherfucking thing ever. On the other, it’s the first entry in the barely-connected Amityville franchise to have a Dutch Colonial house prominently figure into the plot since Amityville 3-D, 13 years earlier, back when they were still getting theatrical releases. Back to the first […]
Return to the complete Twin Peaks index Within the last ten years or so, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me has undergone a substantial re-evaluation, and what was once greeted as one of David Lynch’s worst features has since been reclaimed by many fans as one of his best. I am a little sorry to […]
Like very many contemporary U.S comedies – like all comedies produced by Judd Apatow – The Big Sick: A) is a very loose, shaggy assemblage; B) would significantly benefit from being less shaggy. Though in this case, at least, the shagginess is personable as hell, rather than just feeling like the filmmakers had absolutely no […]
A second review requested by John Grimes, with thanks for donating twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. So as I sit here preparing to confront Giant Robo: The Animation – The Day the Earth Stood Still (and that’s the last time we’ll be typing that all out, thank you very much), […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: Spider-Man: Homecoming provides not only the usual popcorn movie supeheroics, but also a healthy dose of adolescent angst. Genre […]
It’s all right there in the title: Spider-Man: Homecoming. Not “homecoming”, the early-fall tradition in U.S. and Canadian high schools, which puts in only a very mild and plot-inessential cameo in the film. But “homecoming” as in “coming home” as in “welcome to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man, this is where you belong”. I don’t […]
I’m going to chalk it up to some movie-watching form of Stockholm syndrome, or maybe just having my quality needle wrenched out of alignment by the series, but Amityville: A New Generation, struck me as astonishingly close to not completely terrible. The 1993 film brings us to the end of the John G. Jones era […]
So, Despicable Me 3, then. Why not, I guess. It was almost a given that this was going to be an improvement over the last film in the Despicaverse, 2015’s utterly stagnant Minions. And it turns out to be at least a fractional improvement over 2013’s Despicable Me 2, as well, for the same reason: […]
A review requested by Phil Wiese, with thanks for donating to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I am tempted to say that nobody has ever gotten Empire Records right, but that of course smacks of unbridled arrogance: for why I would I say such a thing, if not because I thought that […]
First things first: the sheer weirdness of watching a director whose work up till now has all been characterised by a glacial sheen of emotional remove from her characters and their behavior retelling a story of hothouse Southern Gothic sexuality during the U.S. Civil War – and maintaining that glacial quality! – is all it […]
Obviously the world didn’t “need” a sequel to 1996’s Trainspotting, but the world has nevertheless received a sequel to Trainspotting, with the acutely & I am sure deliberately terrible title T2 Trainspotting. And you know what? It’s actually pretty doggone good, visibly rejuvenating director Danny Boyle and star Ewan McGregor, neither of whom has done […]
Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: Despicable Me 3 protracts the adventures of a bad guy who we were encouraged to like for his badness, […]
