Luck
SimilarCatwoman (2004), Volver (2006),
Watch afterJurassic World Dominion (2022), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
MPAA RatingG,
As the likes of Doogal and Planes make abundantly clear, there is no secret formula for making a great animated kid’s film. But there are some key things to avoid if you want to make a movie aimed at youngsters that satisfies its target demo. Luck, the first feature from Skydance Animation, trips over several of these shortcomings, particularly overwhelming your young audience with too much expository dialogue. Adolescents want wonder and soaring emotion, not endless chatter about how a fictional world operates. Devoting so much time to lore is just one of the many ways Luck underwhelms compared to its potential. Continue Reading →
The Velvet Underground
Watch afterEverything Everywhere All at Once (2022), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022),
To listen to the Velvet Underground today is to marvel at how very much its own thing it was. Their droning, dirge-like songs, often accompanied by the discordant squeaking of a viola, addressed such unsavory subjects as drug addiction and sadomasochism, and seemed to be designed for listeners who neither identified with hippie folk or rebellious rock and roll. They were so far ahead of their time that even more than five decades later no one else has sounded quite like them yet. Todd Haynes’ documentary, just called The Velvet Underground, captures their lightning in a bottle moment in music history, eschewing the tropes of the genre in favor of a dizzying sound and visual landscape. Continue Reading →