Jade
After the aggressively negative critic and audience response to 1980’s Cruising, William Friedkin took a curious “hell with it, I’m going to do whatever I want” approach to projects. None of what he directed over the next decade, save for To Live and Die in L.A., came close to receiving the kind of acclaim his early 70s career did. If anything, it seemed as though he had given up his precise, occasionally unreasonable eye for perfection in favor of churning out the most generic cable-friendly nonsense possible. Continue Reading →
The 355
Watch afterNightmare Alley (2021),
StarringSebastian Stan,
I'll say this for Simon Kinberg: he's got to be just about the nicest man in show business. After all, how do you get a second chance at the director's chair after the unmitigated disaster that was X-Men: Dark Phoenix? According to interviews, he only got that gig at the insistence of Jennifer Lawrence, who would only do the film with him in charge (he was reportedly very easy to work with when Bryan Singer went AWOL on X-Men Apocalypse, forcing Kinberg to pick up the baton). While working on Dark Phoenix, Jessica Chastain approached Kinberg with the idea of starring in and producing a female-led spy franchise a la Mission: Impossible; and so we have The 355, a film seemingly tailor-made to be the kind of mid-budget dross we get every January. Look out, Liam Neeson, you've got competition! Continue Reading →
The King's Man
SimilarBatman & Robin (1997), Batman Forever (1995),
Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Four Brothers (2005), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009),
Mary Poppins (1964) Notting Hill (1999), Speed Racer (2008), The Boondock Saints (1999), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Tropic Thunder (2008),
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), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), 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), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (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 Order of the Phoenix (2007), 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), Dune (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), The Batman (2022), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021),
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
SimilarChildren of Men (2006),
Watch afterDune (2021), Eternals (2021), Free Guy (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (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 →
Jagged
SimilarCléo from 5 to 7 (1962), The Man Who Cried (2000),
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
Alison Klayman's chronicle of the Canadian singer's rise to fame centers around her seminal 1995 album, and the trail it blazed for female artists.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.)
This year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival finally got a hint of scandal—albeit of the most well-mannered variety imaginable—when it was announced that rock star Alanis Morissette, the focus of the new documentary Jagged, would not be attending the film’s gala world premiere, reportedly due to what the Washington Post dubbed “unspecified issues with the finished product.” Continue Reading →