There’s a large section of Disney enthusiasts who, like me, cannot stand these live action remakes. For almost ten years now, the Walt Disney Company has spent a lot of time and money to produce big budget retellings of the most popular movies in their animated canon. Because we live in the age of nostalgia, these movies have proven to be huge commercial successes, and Disney has doubled down on […]
The 1976 King Kong really is quite magnificent in its badness. It’s not that it’s a unjustified remake of an all-time classic film, those are are all over the damn place, that’s not worthy of attention. Even if this one is especially unjustified (after Psycho and Seven Samurai, I’d be inclined to call the 1933 King Kong just about the finest movie ever besmirched with a remake). Rather, it’s the […]
I can think of not one single reason to hold back: the first King Kong, from 1933, is probably the most perfect movie ever made by a Hollywood studio in what we would call, I guess, the “popcorn movie tradition” – that is to say, big-budget adventure movies with rip-roaring special effects, or some other form of over-the-top indulgent spectacle. Since this is, maybe, the single thing that Hollywood is […]
It’s genuinely shocking to me that Lion is as good as it is, for as long as it is. It’s Harvey Weinstein’s duly-anointed champion for the Oscar season, which has only rarely been a good sign in the 21st Century and is frequently the biggest red flag I can think of. And that becomes an even more dire sign in light of the kind of Oscarbait this is: the Inspiring […]
A review requested by Dave F, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. The 2010 film Four Lions could only ever have been made in Britain, for two reasons. One of these reasons is that Britain’s Pakistani population occupies a relatively uncommon sweet spot between assimilation and xenophobia, and that status fuels everything about the story in a way that wouldn’t really work exactly […]
A review requested by Geoffrey Moses, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I have mentioned before, and I shall mention in the future, that one of my most vulnerable weaknesses as a moviegoer is for anything that foregrounds hyper-literate insulting dialogue delivered with sufficient vigor and acidity by top-notch actors, and we have before us one of the giants of the form. While […]
A review series requested by a donor who wishes to remain anonymous, with thanks for multiple contributions to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. In October, 2013, just a smidgen more than one year after the two-part recap movie hit Japanese theaters, along came the first new material in the movie trilogy: Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The Movie – Rebellion, which apparently began when writer Urobuchi Gen wanted […]
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 Japanese anime franchises: “It is not enough to begin at the beginning. We have to […]
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, doesn’t merely fail to button up the holes left by Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) […]
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! We have another title situation, though this time the English situation is more straightforward. There […]
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 story of how skyscraper-sized humanoid biological robots called “Evas”, piloted by emotionally damaged teenagers, fought […]
If nothing else, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 demonstrates with bleak efficiency that the director can only do so much. Francis Lawrence, making his second Hunger Game, still has all the chops he demonstrated with 2013’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and back further still to the 2007 adaptation of I Am Legend, once again capturing with admirable rawness the desperation and raggedness of life after apocalypse. But […]
