With Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, writer-director James Gunn has achieved something, in my eyes, that I don’t think has ever happened before: he’s completed an entire trilogy of comic book movies where none of the three entries have been a disappointment. Probably the closest we’ve come before now has been the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, but I think there’s plenty of room to think that The Dark Knight […]
Greetings and welcome back to Raspberry Picking, where we look back at Golden Raspberry Award winners and decide whether they really deserve to be called the worst movies ever. This time, we’re looking at Catwoman, nominee for six Razzies, winner of three (including, of course, Worst Picture), and the widely acknowledged Turd Standard for superhero movies of the 21st century. But first! ‘Twas January of last year when the overlords of Alternate […]
Tim and Brennan are kicking off the new year by following up on titles they covered throughout 2022. A couple months ago, we covered the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, so it’s high time to circle back around and cover the 2004 remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD, directed by Zack Snyder and written by James Gunn! ******************************************************************* Love the Dawn of the Dead episode? Leave us […]
It’s Brennan’s first official week hosting Pass the Popcorn, and the whole gang joins him for this episode! First, in Worth Mentioning, Brennan talks Annie (1999), Rob brings Uncharted, Tim discusses Teacher’s Pet (by Patreon Harold’s request), and Carrie discusses The Long Good Friday (by Patreon Jack’s request). Then, we dive into a spoiler-free discussion of the HBO Max series Peacemaker, which just aired its season finale, as well as […]
The Suicide Squad is one of the most pleasantly “that was exactly the movie I assumed it would be” movies in ages. That is to say: it has always been very clear that it would be better than 2016’s Suicide Squad, to which it is a very vaguely-related sequel. It has also always been very clear that Warner Bros. and DC wanted it to be a clone of Marvel’s Guardians […]
Intermittently throughout the 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 a major new release. This week: Netflix has commissioned a new zombie movie, Army of the Dead, from slow-motion enthusiast Zack Snyder. There could be no better opportunity to return to his last adventure with the undead, at the (as it were) […]
The very first thing that happens in Brightburn is- well, technically¸ it’s an establishing shot of a rather nice Kansas farmhouse. So the second thing that happens in Brightburn, I should say, is a tracking shot up a bookcase with several titles about fertility and then one prominently-located book on emotionally dealing with the knowledge of infertility, and while we’re seeing these books, we hear a man and a woman […]
One need not enjoy watching the films produced by Marvel Studios over the past eleven years (as I do not) to acknowledge that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, if nothing else, unfailingly consistent. Producer Kevin Feige rules with a heavy hand, and if that means that it’s almost impossibly rare for one of his movies to exude any kind of actual personality or creative inspiration, it’s even rarer for one […]
So, with Thor: Ragnarok, we finally have a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe directed by a no-two-ways-about-it Great Director. And that’s a subjective enough claim, of course; we do after all live in a world where people will earnestly defend Kenneth Branagh, who helmed the first Thor an unfathomably long six and a half years ago, though I find this preposterous. It’s also subjective that Taika Waititi, New Zealand’s […]
A quick tour of the internet has suggested to me that there are two kinds of viewers of The Belko Experiment: fans of screenwriter James Gunn who are outraged by how badly the film mangles his sense of humor and what an unpleasantly nasty slog the whole thing is, and fans of director Greg McLean, who came for the unpleasant nastiness and have found it to be just exactly right. […]
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 know, is it? The 2002 Spider-Man and 2004 Spider-Man 2 did just fine in depicting a […]
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is actually, maybe not good. That is, anyway, the definite opinion of my colleagues and collaborators at this here website, and far be it from me to call them fools. Actually, it’s kind of my opinion as well, sort of. Looking at the thing with an eye towards actually explaining what it is and what it does, I have to concede that a whole […]
