Films and Feelings

       Any follow-up to the 2016 masterpiece,  Zootopia , is going to be disadvantaged. Cinema was still a year ahead of Jordan Peele's "Get Out" when Disney released one of the most articulate explanations of race, allyship, and accountability ever put to film. Now that everyone knows how good, even "timely," a Disney pic can be, how do you surprise everyone a second time?      The insights in this sequel won't spur any new chapters in your sociology 101 textbook. Though honestly, neither was the deflection of white saviourship  that  novel back in 2016. We more or less knew how racial profiling and biases played out in the landscape. What surprised many of us (and validated the rest of us) was the idea that these ideas could be articulated so eloquently in a children's film.     It seems that the studio tried the same thing here with Zootopia 2 that it did with Frozen II six years ago. I think a lot of people wanted that m...

     Last week when I reviewed WICKED: For Good , I mentioned that I couldn't help but analyze the film specifically from the lens of a lifelong fan of the Broadway phenomenon.       I find myself in a similar position here examining the new "Knives Out" movie and its meditation on faith and religion. I can't help but view the film through my own experiences as a practicing believer.       But first, some notes on the filmmaking itself.      The third installment in the Knives Out saga sees Benoit Blanc investigating the murder of a tyrannical priest, Monsignor Wicks, presiding over a smalltown flock. The prime suspect is none other than the young, idealistic Father Jud, the new priest who found Wicks' approach to spirituality repulsive and completely counter to Christ's teachings. Thus, this mystery is a contest between two representations of Christianity, each desperate to define the function of religion in the mod...

      I'm conflicted about how to approach this review. I know everyone has their own yellow brick road to the myth of The Wizard of Oz as a whole and the specific Broadway adaptation that brought us all here.   I don't want to write this only for others who are familiar with the source material.       Even so, I can't help but review this from the perspective of a fan of the Broadway show--someone who has been tracking the potential for a film adaptation since before Jon M. Chu's participation was announced for the ambitious undertaking of translating one of Broadway's most electric shows onto film. I can't help but view this from the vantage point of someone who knew just how many opportunities this had to go wrong.     And it's from that vantage point that I now profess such profound relief that the gambit paid off. We truly have the " Lord of the Rings of musicals ."  I'll give last year's movie the edge for having a slightly...

Earlier this year, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and this summer's Superman movie, James Gunn, attributed the chaos of modern Hollywood to one simple factor. Speaking with Rolling Stone, he said , “I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies. It’s not because of home screens getting so good. The number one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay.” Without the insider knowledge that a Hollywood director has, I’m still inclined to agree. While the artistic and corporative threads of filmmaking have always been in competition, watching many tentpole films of the last fifteen years or so has felt more analogous to a dentist appointment than anything I'd call entertainment, and I can almost always trace the problem to something that should have been taken care of before the cameras ever started rolling. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)  ...