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What are men, compared to rocks and mountains: Pride & Prejudice
Who doesn’t have great affection for the beloved 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice? But: I daresay Joe Wright’s 2005 feature film adaptation (the one with the ampersand) is my P&P. It may be less faithful to the text, but that’s fine; it’s its own thing. It’s delicious and I adore it. I think of it…
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Elisabeth Moss has a villain problem in The Invisible Man
For a movie named after the antagonist, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has a villain problem. At one point, Cecelia (Elisabeth Moss) asks an interesting question: her husband is famous and wealthy, and can have anyone — so why her? In one question, she essentially admits her longstanding insecurity at having a handsome rich man…
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Brad Pitt works out his daddy issues in space, in Ad Astra
Maybe this isn’t fair, but I couldn’t help but associate Ad Astra with Joker. If Joker is a shallow remix of Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, Ad Astra is a bland smoothie of Solaris and Apocalypse Now, with a cavalcade of stars you may remember from Space Cowboys and Armageddon. I half expected Harrison…
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Terminator: Dark Fate is a trashcan of exposition
Criticizing the plots of popcorn action blockbusters is usually a fool’s errand. Nobody cares if Hobbs & Shaw makes any sense, but surely it’s fair game in the Terminator franchise, where untangling pseudo-scientific time travel logic is 99% of the fun. So the biggest disappointment of Dark Fate (other than its singularly unmemorable title, and…
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Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die is an unaffectionate homage
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that Jim Jarmusch would make a zombie movie, since he’s already cycled through idiosyncratic interpretations of westerns (Dead Man), vampires (Only Lovers Left Alive), samurai (Ghost Dog), and thrillers (The Limits of Control). But unlike these, The Dead Don’t Die reads as an unaffectionate (or to coin a word,…
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1917 is not the first single-take movie, but it’s one of the best
Every review or casual comment about 1917, from pan to praise, will all begin with the same undeniable fact: it’s an astounding technical achievement. While far from the first apparent single-take feature-length film, it’s certainly one of the most seamless. Better, the feat is partially insulated from charges of gimmickry in that the structure derives…
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De Diro and Pacino dunk their scrapple in Guinness in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman
Why am I reluctant to publicly pan one of the year’s most acclaimed films? What am I afraid of — being labelled a cinema rat, and getting whacked by a couple of film geeks? It took me years and years of being a film buff, through film school and beyond, for me to realize that…
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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker smothers all hope and wonder
My brilliant wife had the following absolutely perfect appraisal of the first two entries in the new Star Wars trilogy, which I will paraphrase here: “Most of the criticism of The Force Awakens was absolutely correct, but I loved it anyway. Most of the criticism of The Last Jedi was absolutely wrong, but I loved…
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What makes Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds unique also sabotages it
Although easily overlooked among the Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise filmographies, I actually rather enjoy their 2005 War of the Worlds remake. Unfortunately, what makes it unique also sabotages it: It’s practically a requirement for the alien invasion genre that the protagonist be the big hero that saves the world. Refreshingly, Cruise’s character here is…
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Taika Waititi mocks the devil in Jojo Rabbit
Perhaps unfairly, a couple external factors negatively affected my experience of Jojo Rabbit: The Brooklyn Alamo Drafthouse programmed the trailer for Terrence Malick’s forthcoming A Hidden Life before Jojo Rabbit, throwing a spotlight on the “good German” trope they both share. Of course, both quiet and loud German resistance to Nazi atrocities existed, and I’m…
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Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018) has less color than the original, but more of everything else
I appreciate that Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria is not attempting to copy Dario Argento’s horror classic, per se, but the association immediately pitches a number of disappointments to get over. First, its avoidance of the original’s vivid, lurid color is so aggressive as to be a punk rock statement. The creative choice sets up a dramatic…
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Toys buy happiness in the cloying The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
Cloying, saccharine, and worst of all, painfully obvious. Mike Mitchell’s The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part emblematizes my biggest gripe with most contemporary animated features: that perhaps the purest form of cinema is so often overwritten to the point of death. With animation, everything must be literally created from nothing, and anything is possible.…