It’s going to sound like I’m crabbing and bitching and pissing and moaning and harboring all sorts of ill will towards Blade Runner 2049, so let me please clarify one important thing: it’s a fine movie. And that’s already most of the battle won. Given the uncountable number of ways that a decades-later sequel to 1982’s stylistic masterwork Blade Runner could have gone, the fact that BR2049 is good is […]
Alright, the last phase of the year is about to start up! In the very near future, you’ll be able to hear all our thoughts on the upcoming fall season, but I’ll go ahead and start spoiling some of my own thoughts right now. Suffice it to say that, after nine months of movie that haven’t done much to get me very hot and bothered, the semi-official start of Awards […]
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: War for the Planet of the Apes is likely to be the last film in that franchise for a good long while, sad to say. What better cue to spend a whole week revisiting […]
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: Ridley Scott takes us to the prehistory of his 1979 masterpiece Alien with a certain Alien: Covenant. Not the first time we’ve rewound the clock in this franchise, not even the first time Scott […]
In some world, Alien: Covenant has a different title. In that world, it is not a sequel to 2012’s Prometheus, and it is not a prequel to 1979’s Alien, but it’s simply a standalone sci-fi horror picture about a group of colonists who take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and as a result end up as part of a science project gone wrong. Perhaps in that world, I liked Alien: […]
One-third of the Alternate Ending cohort had never seen any of the movies in everybody’s favorite sci-fi//horror/action saga, the Alien series. To rectify that terrible oversight, and also to help all the rest of us get ready for the impending release of Alien: Covenant, we take a closer look at all the films in the classic run of the franchise: Alien (1979), Aliens (1986) Alien³ (1992), Alien Resurrection (1997), Prometheus (2012), […]
Is it a wee bit silly to start thinking about the films of May already, when I’ve not yet seen any of the films of April? Aye, well, life happens pretty fast, and I’m just about ready to get back on me feet with this site again. Our last podcast has the full story of where the hell I’ve been for the last few weeks – if you’re podcast-averse (no […]
So the whole thing where the summer movie season has been creeping earlier and earlier for years now – attested to by our recent record-breaking March box office – is given a huge punch right in the gonads this April. There is, by my count, a grand total of one, count’ em, one movie this month that seems to have been made on the assumption that a substantial paying audience […]
It is a little tempting to overvalue Logan for its novelty. And I do use “novelty” advisedly – it’s no less than the tenth movie in the broadly-construed X-Men movie franchise to come out in the last 17 years, and one of God knows how many superhero comic book adaptations during the same period. But that’s exactly what makes it stand out: not one of its predecessors has felt so […]
The tedious part first: how did I do on my predictions? Not terrible – a hell of a lot of 4/5 categories, in a weird and hard year. In the Big 8, I went 34/43 (79%), in the whole field excluding the short film categories I was a rather crappy 74/105 (71%) – Best Song murdered me, but who didn’t it murder? – and in all 24 I went 84/120, […]
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces the nominees for its awards this Thursday, so I wanted to get my predictions in. Too many pots bubbling over to bother with any kind of discussion, but do pipe up in comments if you just have to hear my logic about any of these things in particular. Best Picture The Big Short Bridge of Spies Carol Mad Max: Fury Road […]
The Online Film Critics Society, of which I am a proud member has announced our nominees for the best in filmmaking in 2015. I’ll skip past the press release to get to the good stuff: here are the nominees in all categories. Best Picture: Brooklyn Carol Ex Machina Inside Out Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Room Sicario Spotlight Best Animated Feature: Anomalisa The Good Dinosaur Inside Out […]
