A version of this review was published at the Film Experience Ant-Man is maybe the most typical film yet made in the now 12-picture Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is up to the individual viewer to decide if that’s a compliment or a vicious & lacerating criticism. But it’s really hard to think of it as […]
“The best Terminator movie since Terminator 2: Judgment Day” is a statement like “Jai Courtney’s best-ever performance in a movie”: they both have the functional shape of a compliment, but they’re not actually saying very much that’s complimentary. And they’re both true of Terminator Genisys, the little movie that couldn’t, currently on pace to be […]
A review requested by Chris D, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I seem to have done this slightly out of order, non? So you’ll have to forgive me if I simply borrow what I said the last time I visited the most famous, infamous, and contentious of […]
A review requested by Frankie Shoup, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I should like it very much if it were a bit easier to find any English-language resources on the reception granted to the 1988 anime feature Akira during its initial release in Japan. It was an […]
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: the plot of Ted 2 touches on the sex life of a human woman and a talking animal brought […]
A review requested by Bryce Wilson, with thanks for his multiple contributions to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. So much for redemption. The third and so-far final part of the Rebuild of Evangelion series (the concluding fourth part is overdue with no release date in sight), Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, […]
A review requested by Bryce Wilson, with thanks for his multiple contributions to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I groused that Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone writes too damn many IOUs to work as its own thing. And wouldn’t you know, the second part actually pays off some of those IOUS! […]
A review requested by Bryce Wilson, with thanks for his multiple contributions to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. It is not enough to begin at the beginning. We have to go before the beginning, to 1995, when the 26 episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion started to air on Japanese television. Telling the […]
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: the failed theme park of Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel Jurassic Park finally opens for business in Jurassic World, with […]
Jurassic World is absolutely the best sequel yet to the 1993 Jurassic Park, which is one of the least-impressive compliments you can pay to a record-setting summer blockbuster. We should not feel obliged to mark it down as a strength when a movie can be confidently declared to be better than not just 1997’s enervating […]
The big surprise of the new action-comedy Spy is how much of an action-comedy it actually is, as opposed to a comedy that’s got some dog-ends of action in it. For a film directed by Paul Feig and starring Melissa McCarthy – a partnership that has resulted in Bridesmaids and the much more overtly comic […]
San Andreas, a by-the-books disaster movie in which Dwayne Johnson fights an earthquake, is exactly the movie you suppose it to be, except in one, absolutely crucial regard: it’s weirdly allergic to fun. By which I guess I mean that “by-the-books disaster movie” suggests one particular register of sobriety and anguished emotions, where as “Dwayne […]
