Films and Feelings

       I spent two-thirds of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey thinking I was watching Ridley Scott's Gladiator only to realize I was watching John Ford's The Searchers all the time. And it was largely this thirteenth-hour realization that secured the film's favorable rating from me.     My slowness in catching onto this  may have been partially caused by me also looking beyond the mark in other ways. Even if it had been fairly telegraphed in the promotional material, I was kind of hoping that Nolan's vision for the mythological epic would unleash a proper monster parade. But Nolan doesn't appear to want to emulate Demond Davis' Clash of the Titans any more than he did with Tim Burton's Batman  in his "Dark Knight" trilogy.       Witches like Circe and Calypso would never be mistaken for anything adjacent to Michelle Pfieffer in Stardust . Even something like "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Lord of the Rings" is further on th...

  As a millennial Disney fan and film student in utero, I often thought about what it would have been like to be there when Aladdin or The Little Mermaid , or even “Snow White” or The Jungle Book , premiered to the culture. It’s one thing to grow up and realize you have a piece of film history with you here in your living room. It’s another to get to watch the culture transform as it engages for the first time with something  And I have this envy for a great many cinematic works. Like, what I would give to go back to 1946 and tell those losers who dismissed It's a Wonderful Life how they had no idea what they were sleeping on. But the Disney canon’s place within the culture is also specific. Their commitment to delivering hopeful stories to an audience that believes itself beyond such frailties as faith or kindness is unparalleled, and that makes their contributions worth studying and celebrating. And so I didn’t take it for granted during that period in late 2013/early ...