Like many comedic actors, Rebel Wilson has fallen into a schtick and can’t get up. This is not her fault. 2011’s Bridesmaids and 2012’s Pitch Perfect, both of which featured her in incandescent side roles, were a hell of a one-two punch to get a career going. Her deadpan, brutally honest characterizations are and were genuinely funny, […]
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: we are far enough into the present wave of Stephen King adaptations that we’ve hit the “all the famous […]
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. Last week (and also this week, and very likely next week also): that redoubtable old speculative fiction mainstay, the multiverse, has […]
A review requested by Jack, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! The NeverEnding Story comes attached to a very important fun fact: it was, at the time of its […]
Nine years and two months separated the releases 2013’s Oz the Great and Powerful and 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, both directed by Sam Raimi. He made no other features between them (though he did some television work, and produced quite a bit), making this by far the longest break between projects […]
Even for ardent fans like myself, it can be a challenge to remember which Hong Sang-soo movie is which. The hardest-working man in South Korean show business has written and directed 27 features over the past 26 years, creating an oeuvre that rivals those of Rohmer and Ozu for stubborn variations-on-a-theme consistency. To be fair, […]
Witchcraft XIV: Angel of Death and Witchcraft XV: Blood Rose were shot at the same time by the same group of people. There should be no reason for them to be as far apart in quality as they are, and yet: Angel of Death is no great shakes, but it’s basically watchable as a bargain-basement […]
I have mentioned more than once that DreamWorks Animation has become the most stylistically interesting of the major American animation studios,* more or less out of commercial necessity: their films make less money so they have lower budgets, and since they have lower budgets they can’t rely on raw processing power to put things over, […]
If one has the directing bug, a bit of money burning a hole in one’s pocket, and a name that will sell a series to the BBC – for instance, Hugh Laurie – it would definitely be easy to decide to adapt an Agatha Christie novel. That’s just what you do. However, it’s what you […]
On March 16, 1979, Columbia Pictures released The China Syndrome, a cautionary tale (starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon) about an accident at an American nuclear power plant. Twelve days later, the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania experienced a partial meltdown—still the worst such accident we’ve had, over 40 years […]
Return to the complete Party Down index First Airdate: May 8, 2009 Written by John Enbom Directed by Bryan Gordon I have good news, then bad news, then good news again. First off, this is – as promised – the best episode of season 1, perhaps of the entire series (I know I’m backtracking but I […]
In the very first scene of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, screenwriters J.K. Rowling and Steven Kloves make “Dumbledore is gay” canonical in the Harry Potter universe. At the far side of 142 impossibly unhurried minutes, this will turn out to have been the most consequential narrative development of the film. After three films, […]
