Barbie
SimilarBridget Jones's Diary (2001), Catwoman (2004), Enchanted (2007), Ghost (1990), Ghostbusters (1984), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), The Holiday (2006), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Volver (2006),
Watch afterBlue Beetle (2023), Elemental (2023), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), Meg 2: The Trench (2023),
Oppenheimer (2023) Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), The Flash (2023),
The news that director Greta Gerwig’s follow-up project to her celebrated adaptation of Little Women would be a movie about Barbie dolls was met with skepticism and even disappointment when first announced in mid-2019. What did it mean for the future of one of Hollywood’s few high-profile female directors? Would she abandon her apparent passion for telling intimate stories about coming of age? Continue Reading →
Asteroid City
SimilarStalker (1979),
Watch afterIndiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023),
Oppenheimer (2023) The Flash (2023),
StarringFisher Stevens, Willem Dafoe,
About twenty miles or so outside of Marfa, Texas, there’s a mural dedicated to the production of George Stevens’ Giant. Big wooden standees display James Dean with his arms draped over a rifle, framing him in the iconic Christ pose which would be the last image to represent Dean in the public consciousness before he died. Giant is about a great number of things, though, fittingly, what resonates all these years later is its ideas about the passing of time. Continue Reading →
Babylon
SimilarLucky Number Slevin (2006), Maria Full of Grace (2004), My Own Private Idaho (1991),
Watch afterAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), The Whale (2022),
Babylon is a frenetic crash course in Hollywood history that plays fast and loose with most of its facts. However, it still paints a vivid portrait of Tinseltown from its birth to the behemoth it is today. You won’t find the meticulous and mind-boggling commitment to detail of Mank (most of Margot Robbie’s costuming looks more 2010s than 1920s). Still, director and screenwriter Damien Chazelle is less interested in getting everything right than translating that history into something an audience can feel in their bones. Continue Reading →
The Suicide Squad
SimilarFree Willy (1993), Godzilla Raids Again (1955), Hellboy (2004),
Live and Let Die (1973) Superman Returns (2006), The Legend of Zorro (2005),
Watch afterBlack Widow (2021), Eternals (2021), Free Guy (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021),
StarringDee Bradley Baker,
In the last decade, there have been numerous shitty attempts to replicate the success of the Marvel Studios formula, but Suicide Squad (2016) may be the worst of the worst. Writer/director David Ayer’s dark and gritty tone clashed with the pop music-heavy trailers, marketing that included songs already used by – and meant to remind viewers of – Guardians of the Galaxy. In the end, the studio hired that same trailer company to re-cut the movie, which was released into theaters as an incomprehensible mess. Noticeably missing a “2” in its title, The Suicide Squad is essentially a 200 million dollar do-over. It’s the movie Warner Brothers should’ve made five years ago. Continue Reading →
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
The DCEU embraces its inner Bugs Bunny, and is all the better for it.
If you'd have told me two years ago that not only would I be looking forward to a sequel (such as it is) to 2015's murky, execrable Suicide Squad, but I'd end up really enjoying it, I'd have banished you to the darkest cell in Arkham Asylum. To be fair, David Ayer's overstuffed, underlit supervillain team-up came right at the wrong time: the product of post-Avengers superhero mania, but amidst the polarizing reactions to DCEU's so-called 'dark, gritty' approach to superheroes, it was the victim of a compromised vision of what was undoubtedly a bad idea in the first place -- reshoots, changes in tone, a final cut engineered by the house that did the trailers, etc.
The one bright spot though? Margot Robbie's semi-Gothic-Lolita reinterpretation of the Joker's moll Harleen Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn), a brash, madcap figure imbued with scene-stealing energy by one of the greatest actors of her generation. Now, with Birds of Prey, Robbie's Quinn is given a vehicle worthy of her talents, a manically gleeful girl-power anthem that's just as energetic and irreverent as she is.
As Birds of Prey (sorry, Birds of Prey: or the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) begins, the Joker's broken up with Harley. Good, great, we hated Leto's version of the Clown Prince of Crime anyway, get rid of him. Luckily, Harley gets over him just about as quickly as we do, blowing up the Ace Chemicals plant, dusting herself off, and trying to start a new life as a bounty hunter/mercenary/thug for hire. But before she can get that business off the ground, she finds herself wrapped up in a scheme involving a secret diamond laser-encoded with the numbers needed to access a secret bank account with all the crime money in the world. (Not quite an uncut gem, but you get my gist.) Continue Reading →