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), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (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 →
No Time to Die
Watch afterDune (2021), Eternals (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 →