& Categories Reviews TV March 18, 2021 “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” flies steady but lacks heat It remains to be seen if Marvel's latest TV spinoff can capture audiences' attention as well as its predecessor.
& Categories Movies Reviews March 1, 2021 “Raya and the Last Dragon” is a rollicking Southeast Asian-styled fantasy Disney's high-fantasy adventure is spirited and dynamic, even as it flattens a host of Southeast Asian cultural signifiers into a homogenous whole.
& Categories Movies Reviews September 3, 2020 “Mulan” brings honor to Disney’s original, but loses some heart Niki Caro's remake of the animated classic slots nicely into the Chinese war epic formula, but a bit of Disney magic gets lost in the mix.
& Categories Movies Reviews June 12, 2020 “Artemis Fowl” is slapdash, snoozy, and stuck in the early 2000s The adaptation of the first in Eoin Colfer's series is alarmingly messy for a project that's been in the works for almost two decades.
& Categories Filmmaker of the Month Movies April 28, 2020 “Spider-Man: Far From Home” forces Peter Parker to grow up The latest Marvel film to date is more than a mid-sized follow up to Avengers: Endgame -- it establishes Peter Parker as the beating heart of the new MCU.
& Categories Filmmaker of the Month Movies April 27, 2020 “Thor: Ragnarok” was a joyous punch in the face of colonialism Taika Waititi's irreverent revamp of the Thor series, Thor: Ragnarok, manages to weave some much-needed criticism of imperialism among the gags.
& Categories Filmmaker of the Month Movies April 26, 2020 “Black Panther,” M’Baku, and reclaiming the savage Ryan Coogler's superhero film not only salvages the colonialist origins of the comic's imagery, it reclaims them for a Black audience.
& Categories Filmmaker of the Month Movies April 18, 2020 “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” Saw the MCU Grow Up It's not perfect, but the Russo brothers' conspiracy-thriller take on the MCU turned its eye inward to the more explicitly political.
& Categories Filmmaker of the Month Movies April 17, 2020 “Thor: The Dark World” Feels Like MCU Filler Thor's second standalone adventure buckles under the weight of too many characters and a confused directorial hand.
A Categories Features Filmmaker of the Month Movies April 12, 2020 Assembling “The Avengers” An unlikely team of heroes could have been a cliché, but Joss Whedon's first foray into the MCU worked because it toyed with its moving parts.
