Films and Feelings

    The secret weapon of The Looney Tunes has always been their natural eloquence with meta-textuality. Seriously. Go rewatch "Duck Amuck." It's high art. That trick isn't really new here in a landscape where "self-awareness" is just generally baked into the fabric of most millennial media.      But Coyote vs Acme nonetheless feels cut from a very different cloth.  I don't even know if that's from anything extra this film does so much as what it doesn't do. This movie never feels like it's trying to prove how much smarter it is than the audience. It doesn't feel smug or self-promoting.     Like, it takes a different kind of self-awareness to look at how many times a certain Wile E. Coyote has tried to get his hands around a certain speeding bird and ask if maybe the poor guy, who has literally tried everything under the sun, has just had the odds stacked against him. It takes a certain kind of movie to decide that this dude just needs so...

    The first note I made for this film is that I knew a bunch of cowboys growing up. But I regretfully did not know any who were just so willing to burst into song.      I thought then that I knew what I was getting into with this movie. But I could not anticipate what this story would try to feed me.      The movie sees Amziah King, a good-natured beekeeper, smalltown musician, and all-around good dude, sorting through some business deals as he happens to reunite with his former foster-daughter, Kateri. Crossing paths again allows them to mutually rediscover what they gave to each other as two people who lifted each other up. But when King's entire stock is stolen at the worst possible moment, Kateri gets to step-up and defend what is theirs.      Amziah King is McConaughey at his most endearing. His ability to put the viewer at ease is the film's greatest trick. I've heard some buzz about this being his best performance ever. I'd...

      There's something vaguely Spielberg about The End of Oak Street , and I don't really even mean the dinosaurs, which look quite a bit different from the CG masterworks of the seminal '93 film.      The Platts are a conventional American family living in 1980s suburbia who are caught in a bizarre time anomaly that sends their entire neighborhood back to the prehistoric age.  What follows plays like a more visceral rendition of '95 Jumanji . There's a very PG13 level of blood onscreen. But most of the anxiety derives from just how unceremoniously the dinosaurs are seen snacking on the neighbors.  Without ever feeling like it's trying to outsmart the audience, the film drives home the idea that, yeah, if your street was sucked into a wormhole, the dinos would get you too--and probably without even needing to try hard.      Among many other things, the movie is a masterclass in filmmaking tension. Amidst a stampede of gigantic fang...

      Somewhere in the multiverse, there's an opening chord of a review where I celebrate Spiderman: Brand New Day as some kind of welcome "return to basics" for the MCU, but that's not more than partially true.       This movie is a lot more straightforward than cohesive than most Marvel pics from the early stretch of the decade. Feige finally feels confident that, yes, we know that there's a multiverse, and we don't need more reminders.     But this is also not a budget Marvel movie. The film still designs an elaborate fireworks show for Peter Parker to dance around. There is also definite signaling for future Marvel adventures. Sadie Sink's stealth role in this movie (a sizzling introduction into the MCU) teases the integration of a new family of superheroes set to join the ranks of The New Avengers.      But these sneak peeks feel like just that, and unlike sloppier Marvel pics, they aren't made to bear the weight of the e...

     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 eleventh-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 the op...

      Some will say, "We don't need another edgy superhero!" But that's not what makes the utter mediocrity of DC's new Supergirl so devastating. People were saying "We don't need another X superhero" since 2012, and the post-Infinity saga stupor we've slogged through was not triggered by piling one-too-many superheroes onto the camel's back.     The Flash sucked because its perversion of the butterfly effect theory was convoluted and ham-fisted. Black Adam sucked because nobody on that film knew what a moral dilemma actually looks like. "Love and Thunder" sucked because, despite what everyone thought in 2017, Waititi's style only barely worked in "Ragnarok" and was not going to work in a script which feels like it was farted out half-past midnight.     Supergirl had none of those issues. The real tragedy of Supergirl is that it so easily could have worked.     Drifting around the universe has mostly worked for Sup...

     Maybe it was self-control that compelled Spielberg to build his whole movie around aliens but give the aliens themselves as little screentime as possible. (Or, for all I know, he did it on a dare.)  But this is only one of the risks taken by his latest film.       This first encounter picture is distanced from something like Independence Day and more toward something like 2001: A Space Odyssey --and it's even closer to something like Arrival . The film sees a cyber-security worker, Daniel Kilner (Josh O'Connor) who defects with the intent to reveal what he knows to the world: the government has had repeated, secret encounters with extraterrestrial life. He has a team of underground sympathizers, lead by Hugo Wakefield (Colmon Domingo), but he also has agent Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) out to stop the truth at any cost. Kilner's only chance getting the truth out there is in joining up with Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a newscast personali...

            I have very little context for anything He-Man. But that shouldn't count against Mattel's new Masters of the Universe film. I had very little context for the first "Thor" movie, and even less for Guardians of the Galaxy . But those faced no trouble becoming, and remaining, major pillars of pop culture for me.       With Masters of the Universe , there are pieces here that are vaguely (and occasionally not-so-vaguely) reminiscent of both of these properties. But these are surface connections. In the short time since those movies entered the arena, Hollywood has already forgotten why we even fell in love with these epic adventures in the first place.      Adam is the crown prince of the mythical Eternia, a universe that was razed by the evil Skeletor the same day the king and queen sent Adam off to earth to protect him from Skeletor's rage. In the fifteen years since, Adam has thought of nothing else (and a...

      I haven't historically considered myself a "Star Wars" kid. And to be clear, I take no pride in saying that or anything. I respect the property and what it's given to pop culture.      But I do feel like it's worth mentioning in this review that I didn't really go into Jon Favreu's The Mandalorian and Grogu thinking I had much of what I'd call nostalgia for this movie to exploit.       And yet watching this movie, I found myself hearkening back to the things about Star Wars that caught my attention as a kid. For me, that was the gladiator-style match in "Attack of the Clones." This film offers quite a few roller-coasters along those lines. And as far as the creature designs go for the monsters in these arenas, they were quite good. I wasn't trying too hard to anticipate which were computer-generated and which were puppeted, but the aesthetics of both the Jim Henson era and the Spielberg era sat very well here in this vessel....

    I've learned not to be ungrateful for movies like  You, Me & Tuscany . It's the kind of picture that can be easily written off as predictable or derivative.      And Kat Cairo's film definitely rides on some genre shorthand. Halle Bailey's Anna has very similar flaws to most rom-com heroines as this untethered 20-something trying to figure out how to stretch a check. And the story itself lands about where every one of these movies do. (Though, remind me, how does every Tom Cruise movie end?)      After the screening concluded, one of the ladies sitting behind me even said something much like, "Yeah, that was a lot like While You Were Sleeping ." But she didn't sound smug in her assessment. Her pronouncement was more encoded with the excitement that comes with discovery--the realization that she had found something like a worthy successor. And as a fan of Sandra Bullock's second-best rom-com, I was inclined to agree with this la...

    The fanboy renaissance manages to reach even higher heights with the new "Super Mario Galaxy Movie." The easter eggs and cameos are back with a vengeance, and in much richer resolution than we'd have thought possible even five years ago.     It's for this kind of thing that the movie will be called "wish fulfillment" for video game nerds, but I personally felt fed as an animation enthusiast. To see such caricatured designs playing on such a vivid, textured playground is a rarity. It's only when you see the bricks of a giant, fairy-tale castle splintering and disintegrating that you feel like this world has weight, consequences, and there is something about that which feels strangely validating. And as with the last movie, as with the Mario universe as a whole, the animated world's command over its own landscape lets you swim between all sorts of exotic and eclectic locales and genres at leisure.          Every single cast member...

    The elements in Project Hail Mary are all mostly straightforward and build to a fairly familiar end: drop an average Joe into an extraordinary situation where he is required to be extraordinary also, and watch extraordinary things happen. This is proven territory.      And I spent most of the time drafting this review trying to decide whether that was a point for or against the film, helmed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller--and whether that made a difference for a non-franchise piece like this, the exact kind of film we need to succeed at the box office in order to have a healthy landscape. I think the answer to that question is honestly bigger than any one film, even a reasonably well-done one such as this.     But I will say that a movie like Project Hail Mary gives me some hope, and it's my wish that the film continues to find people who will receive it with zeal. And I hope that the people who do will continue to search for other films that they...

     In the 1950s under the threat of nuclear warfare, Hollywood premiered such exercises as The Day the Earth Stood Still or War of the Worlds where an alien power would pass judgment on humankind, holding its fate in its hands. Here in the 2020s under the shadow of such threats as climate change, Hollywood sends to be our judge ... beavers.     Let me back up ...      Daniel Chong's new film from Pixar Animation, Hoppers , sees  Mabel (Piper Curda), a college student whose self-appointed mission is to preserve the glade where she used to find sanctuary with her now deceased grandmother. Her biggest opponent is hometown boy and beloved mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who has designs to plow over the glade in order to open his new freeway--estimated to save travelers four whole minutes of commuting.       Mabel gets her golden opportunity when she uncovers secret technology pioneered by her professor which allows a human to rem...

      I've been trying hard to find to see if I can't find a way to talk around the Scream 7 situation with all its associated turmoil. On the one hand, congrats to Neve Campbell for holding her ground until Paramount recognized her contributions to the franchise. On the other hand, it's a shame they had to drown Melissa Barrera in order to welcome her back into the fold.      But these kinds of contradictions, they follow both the slasher genre as a whole as well as this franchise specifically. I definitely have mixed feelings about the delight that comes with watching this movie in the theater as the audience all winces in unison while Ghostface delivers a particular nasty cut to a young girl who certainly did not deserve to be vivisected this way. The franchise itself has mixed feelings about the fandom it engenders, punishing the mania that springs up in the wake of humans being hacked to death--while also very much depending on it.  So it's perhap...

    There isn't a story on the books that can't somehow trace its genealogy to the works of William Shakespeare. Such is the nature of inspiration and archetype.       But the latest film from anime auteur, Mamoru Hosoda, is almost an adaptation of, rather than a homage to, Shakespeare's Hamlet , carrying over character names and even a few iconic lines.  Yet it's not what Scarlet borrows from Shakespeare that gives the story its weight, but what it adds--and I'm not just talking about the giant thunder dragon in the sky.      The Prince of Denmark in this story is reimagined as Princess Scarlet. This film sees her failing in her quest to avenge her father and being doomed to wander in some sort of desolate afterlife. Her only consolation is the idea that she might find her treacherous uncle somewhere in this wasteland and see her vengeance fulfilled in this world. But her quest sees her crossing paths with someone else, a medic from a ...