The LEGO Ninjago Movie lacks the crucial comedic focuses of the first two installments in this quickly-expanding series.
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Category: Remember All the Movies, Terry, We’d Go See
THE LAST DETAIL (1973), and a Hal Ashby Requiem
While watching 1973’s The Last Detail in preparation for Richard Linklater’s impending sequel Last Flag Flying, I realized that no one really makes FILMS like Hal Ashby anymore, which is surprising given our current age of relentless derivativeness (at best, “homage”). It’s undeniably a testament to the distinctness of Ashby’s work on multiple fronts:
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BATTLE OF THE SEXES (Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)
What was the last sports movie that completely failed to capture the cinematic dynamism of the sport?
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Marvelous Documentaries vs. Marvel-ish Documentaries
Documentary filmmaking possesses a high floor in regards to the consistent quality of even its weakest offerings, largely because the subjects are almost always compelling enough to justify a feature-length examination. And yet, the genre simultaneously suffers from perhaps the most monotonous output as well due to most utilizing the same-old aesthetics.
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FIVE CAME BACK (Laurent Bouzereau)
Mark Harris’ Five Came Back is one of the best books ever written about the film industry. Unfortunately, the conventional Netflix documentary adapted from it bears none of the formal inventiveness so integral to the success of the source material.
The Judicial Juice of the Academy Awards
Ever since O.J.: Made in America won the Oscar for Best Documentary earlier this year, I’ve been contemplating whether it should’ve even been eligible.
KILLING GROUND, WOLF CREEK, & the Current State of Torture Porn
Comparing 2005’s Wolf Creek (the movie; not the newer TV adaptation) to the recently released Killing Ground acts as a sort of Australian lens through which to examine just how much the horror genre’s relationship to gruesome violence has changed over the last decade.
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All The World’s a Stage, and All the Men and Women Merely Selfish Audiences
My main problem with criticism today, both formal and informal, can be summarized in the phrase: “the selfish audience.”
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THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS Questions the Fate of the FURIOUS Franchise
The Fast and the Furious franchise shares more with Marvel movies than just overflowing box office riches. At their cores, they seek to offer audiences exactly what they expect, which basically constitutes nothing more than things that go BOOM.
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THE CIRCLE (James Ponsoldt)
When the most striking aspects of a cinematic adaptation of a novel that’s anything but novel (see what I did there?) cannot even be solely credited to the movie itself, it’s safe to say that no one needs to particularly rush to see it (especially since reading the original book – presumably worthwhile enough for a studio to spend money obtaining the film rights – would almost surely be a better use of time).
Write All Nite 