Films and Feelings

Inspired by the children's book series by Nancy Springer, Netflix's new film, Enola Holmes , turns the spotlight onto the younger sister of the famed detective as a new mystery thrusts her into an insidious conspiracy that compels her to take control of her own life and leave her own mark. The film's greatest achievement is reaffirming that lead actress Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things is indeed one of the most promising up and coming talents around and can seemingly step into any role with enthusiasm, but beyond that there's little about this film to celebrate. Enola Holmes lives alone with her mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham-Carter), away from the pursuits of her much older, much more accomplished older brothers--the snooty Mycroft (Sam Clafin) and the ever-charming, ever famous Sherlock (Henry Cavill). Enola enjoys the attention of her mother until Eudoria vanishes without warning. It is this disappearance that summons her older brothers back to the estate to se...

In part one of this series, we discussed that while, yes, golden age Pixar films enjoyed critical support, no one was actually as excited to call them "masterpieces" as retrospective criticism would have you think. In part two , we examined how the studio's reputation buoyed the critical reception of nearly a decade full of grade-B Pixar sequels which left many questioning the studio's creative integrity. This, our concluding episode, dissects the consequences of both a romanticized history of Pixar's classics and of Pixar exposing its own cash-grab capacity through its string of middling sequels. The question of "but is it  Pixar good ?" isn't unique to Coco , Onward , or  The Good Dinosaur.  What  is  new is the degree of influence this question is holding over new entries into the Pixar library. Critics are much more eager to punish new Pixar films for not being “classic” than they were for actual “classics.” MODERN PIXAR As we slowly started pul...

Part 1 -- Part 3 Last time in this critical history of Pixar films, we discussed how even in Pixar’s golden age critics were stingier with their stars than retrospective praise would have you remember. Critics said movies like Finding Nemo and The Incredibles were "pretty good," but were hesitant to commit to anything more than that. But time has been very kind to the films of the first fifteen years of Pixar's reign, films whose reputations have reached the legendary proportions we recognize today.  We're only fresh out of this most recent decade of Pixar movies, so it's difficult to ascertain how this next batch will age, but the early signs for this run of Pixar sequels are less promising than they were for their predecessors. While there was still a modicum of courtesy afforded to the most acclaimed animation studio in the West, critics during Pixar's decade of sequels will receive these films with more uncertainty and recall them with less enthusiasm....

                Though "the critics" are an everpresent entity in the film conversation, t he only exposure most moviegoers have to actual film criticism beyond just checking a film’s score on Rotten Tomatoes is on the yearly “For Your Consideration” ads that start popping up around bus stops when studios go bowling for Oscar nominations. Take this ad for Damien Chazelle’s awards frontrunner  La La Land,  which includes excerpts from reviews by various film critics, including  Owen Gleiberman.  The ad spotlights this passage from Gleiberman’s review: “That’s why it feels so right, in ‘La La Land,’ to see a daring filmmaker go whole hog in re-creating a lavish studio-system musical, replete with starry nights and street lamps lighting up the innocence of soft-shoe romance, and two people who were meant for each other literally dancing on air.”     There is a lot we can dig into with this tagline cri...