I really thought I could do it this year. With traditional bellwethers for the Academy Awards seeming to go out of their way to hint at a "throwback" year by awarding middle-brow and historically revisionistic movies like Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Vice it seemed like this could be a year that I might sit out, cudmudgeonly throwing shade …
Generally speaking I don't cry in the movie theatre. Being teased relentlessly in childhood for being a crybaby has, for better or worse, trained me to develop stiff upper lips and emotional dams that rarely flood over (we can discuss how unhealthy this is for me another time). But one of the few occasions that …
Continue reading Studio Ghibli #0: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
In our cinematic age of uber-franchises dominating theatres across the globe, no two franchises have suffered as much ridicule and fan-rage as the Transformers movie series and the DC Comics Extended Universe (DCEU). The Transformers franchise – based on a 1980s cartoon that was blatantly an extended toy commercial – found its reputation ground into …
Continue reading Bumblebee & Aquaman (Big Screen Double Feature)
And coming in, just under the wire for 2018, is my retrospective look at the best movies of 1988. This year is personally significant in that it features Who Framed Roger Rabbit? – the very first movie I have any recollection of seeing in the theatre. Apart from that movie however, every movie from 1988 is one …
Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) is a director who has long reveled in making his audience disoriented and uncomfortable. Whether in explicitly disturbing us or in pushing us up against our social mores he has made a career out of eliciting nervous laughter with his macabre sense of humor. His …
Look, I understand how you might be feeling. This is the seventh Spider-Man movie since 2002 and the fourth reboot. Your base instinct is to ask if another Spider-Man movie is at all necessary. Well in this case, the answer is unequivocally yes. From Phil Lord and Christopher Miller – the minds that brought you 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, and theoretically …
Continue reading Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Big Screen Review)
Charting the Coen brothers movies is to see how the landscape of movies has evolved and changed over the years. Starting with Blood Simple in 1984, they began as cult directors who spearheaded (along with other directors) the emergence of the indie-film movement of the late 80s and early 90s before evolving into solid mid-budget performers …
Since we last checked in with Netflix six months ago, there has been an undeniable shift in the steaming service's movie strategy. Up to a few months ago, Netflix's output of original movies seemed to primarily comprise of mid-budget movies that used to be the bread-and-butter of the Hollywood box office but have gotten squeezed …
After winning awards for "Best Picture" and "Best Director" for his superb 2014 drama 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen could've made just about any movie as his follow-up. Luckily for us he decided to make Widows, a commercial heist film that deftly balances thrills with poignancy and is highly entertaining while remaining firmly grounded in the …
As always, here is where I dump all the movies I've been catching up on in preparation for my "Best of the Year" list due somewhere around New Year's. Although it's still (relatively) early days, I think it's safe to say some of the movies below might end up on the list. Previous entries: Part …
Homebody Movies 