The King's Man
SimilarBatman Forever (1995),
Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Mary Poppins (1964), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005),
Watch afterEternals (2021), Free Guy (2021), Nightmare Alley (2021), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021),
StarringRhys Ifans, Robert Aramayo,
Studio20th Century Studios,
Early in the King's Man, Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) reads a newspaper chronicling the human cost of the then-nascent World War I. The headline for all this carnage reads "When will this misery end?" It’s fitting since I found myself constantly asking myself the same question as The King's Man dragged on and on. For some reason, a franchise that’s previously leaned heavily on anal sex jokes and Elton John beating up evil henchmen wants to get serious in the most superficial way possible. Continue Reading →
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
SimilarBring It On (2000), Free Willy (1993), Hellboy (2004), Night at the Museum (2006), Superman Returns (2006),
Watch afterEternals (2021), Free Guy (2021), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021),
StarringShohreh Aghdashloo,
StudioBron Studios, Columbia Pictures,
One of the few moments of genuine humanity from Ghostbusters: Afterlife comes before the movie starts. In the press screening intro video, director and co-writer Jason Reitman shows up to tell everyone to please enjoy the movie. Then he briefly mentions the high stakes pressure of taking up the mantle of a beloved film property from his father, Ivan Reitman. Continue Reading →
Eternals
Similar28 Weeks Later (2007), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Aliens (1986), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Free Willy (1993), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Hellboy (2004), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Stalker (1979), Superman Returns (2006), The Legend of Zorro (2005), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974),
Watch afterBlack Widow (2021), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), The Batman (2022),
It's funny to think about the mission creep that's escalated within the Marvel Cinematic Universe since its debut in 2008 with the first Iron Man. Watching Eternals, you can't help but wonder that all of this started, as Jeff Bridges once quipped, in a cave with a box of scraps. Now, with Thanos and the events of Eternals, the MCU truly delves into the cosmic -- the vast span of space and time, and the very fabric of the universe at stake. And yet, the bigger and longer the MCU grows (heh), the more weightless it all feels; there's heaps of ambition at play in Marvel's latest, at least within the meager confines of Kevin Feige's franchise stewardship, but its reach exceeds its grasp. Continue Reading →
No Time to Die
Watch afterEternals (2021), Free Guy (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021),
To speak of No Time to Die is to speak of what came before it. Of course, that sounds obvious in theory; the Daniel Craig era of 007 comes to an end here. They lightly tied into each other until Spectre drunkenly tried and failed at deepening the mythology. While the quality of the films varied, at least they were all distinct. It's been fifteen years and five movies -- now it all comes to a head, the stakes ostensibly high and the emotions primed to be deeper. And yet, against all odds, Cary Joji Fukunaga's offering to the franchise is derivative enough of its most recent predecessors to fumble conceptually and concretely. Continue Reading →
Jungle Cruise
Watch afterBlack Widow (2021), Free Guy (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), The Suicide Squad (2021),
StudioTSG Entertainment, Walt Disney Pictures,
The phenomenon of Disney adapting its own theme park rides to the silver screen will never not be fascinating to me. It's the ultimate act of corporate synergy: watch Disney movies, come to Disneyland to experience them in real life, come ride our rides, then watch the movie based on the rides. What's even more fascinating are the ones that work: Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean pulled off a minor miracle in adapting a pretty groan-worthy theme park ride into a vibrant, Errol Flynn-like adventure. And in an attempt to recapture that kind of heat, we now have Jungle Cruise, which gets points for referencing the right things, even as it refuses to reinvent the wheel. Continue Reading →