Tag: Helena Bonham Carter
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Ocean’s Eight is a pleasantly diverting trifle
Gary Ross’ Ocean’s Eight is, like all Ocean’s films before it, a pleasantly diverting trifle. But its relative deficiency of zip and pizzazz makes me wonder if co-producer Steven Soderbergh positioned his own Logan Lucky as an act of sabotage. I found myself mentally compiling a wishlist while watching: Some praise: Anne Hathaway was totally…
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Terminator Salvation is oppressively feel-bad apocalypse porn
Terminator Salvation was released in a year curiously rife with apocalypse porn. The visions of world’s end in theaters that year varied wildly in tone: everything from illuminating art to alarmism to escapism. The competition to bum you out included Roland Emmerich’s 2012, which utilized the best special effects technology money could buy to ritually…
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A muggle tries to make sense of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince
As Pottermania began some years ago, I recall being amazed at how similar it all seemed to Neil Gaiman’s Books of Magic, which predates J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel by about five years. In it, boy wizard Tim Hunter, equipped with broken glasses and an owl, is prophesied to be an immensely powerful wizard.…
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Oi t’ink Tim Burton’s up to summat in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of a conversation about movies with this blogger is no doubt aware that I like musicals about as much as I like biopics. That is to say, not at all. I do, however, love Tim Burton, and count Ed Wood among my personal favorite films. So if he could…