Movie Review: Pete’s Dragon (2016)
The audacity of Disney’s shrewd reboot business model eventually invokes a feeling of admiration, that is, after the seizure inducing eye-rolling and involuntary dry-heaving stops. Through the modern developments of CGI, Disney has realized—with a stunning and perfected practice of creative cynicism—that they can reimagine their known brands from the past into newer, glossier products … Continue reading
Movie Review: Suicide Squad (2016)
If the regulative powers within the state of Michigan or the EPA ever decide to find a streamlined, efficient solution to the poisoning of residents in Flint, they should immediately then turn their attention towards the obviously corrupted water supply running through Warner Brothers’ DC offices. One last bit of hope wants to believe that … Continue reading
Movie Review: Ghostbusters (2016)
If these last couple of weeks has taught us anything it’s that our culture has been possessed by black & white absolutism. Differing opinions on the political climate, the significance of modern tragedies, or even the unimportant passions behind pop-culture trends and movies are seen as positions in some sort of moral war; an engagement … Continue reading
Movie Review: X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
Somewhere in the first half of X-Men: Apocalypse a group of scrappy teenage mutants exit a movie theater circa 1983 after witnessing the last of the Star Wars franchise (or what should have been the last): Return of the Jedi (1983). As they debate the merits of the trilogy, mostly going back and forth on … Continue reading
Movie Review: The Nice Guys (2016)
Shane Black’s latest film The Nice Guys seems quite out of place with our current trends of cinema, mostly because it’s the product of a bygone era of machismo centric mismatched buddy-cop comedy thrillers that found their peak over twenty years ago. The genre of clashing personas, constant witty jousting, and relentless action were an … Continue reading
Movie Review: High-Rise (2016)
It’s unsurprising that the works of science-fiction novelist and satirist J.G. Ballard would eventually be prone to misinterpretation, mostly because it’s the fate that befalls most socially critical writers (who, after all, knows the proper use of the term Orwellian anymore?). It’s a problem rooted in the absence of context. Ballard—who died in 2009—wrote specifically … Continue reading
Movie Review: The Lobster (2015)
Though you might not consciously be aware of it, most modern societies are constructed around the favored legal restriction and enforcement of monogamy through the governmentally approved promotion of its desired outcome: marriage. It’s a now unspoken social contract that has infiltrated the developing human brain over the course of centuries, where the practice, exercise, … Continue reading
Movie Review: Captain America: Civil War (2016)
In building the all-encompassing Marvel Cinematic Universe (or the MCU for short), Disney/Marvel, a.k.a. our New Cinematic Entertainment Overlords, have sometimes taken shortcuts in fashioning their individual standalone character films. Though the quality in some of their chapters has improved as of late—most notably with the likes of Peyton Reed’s surprisingly amusing Ant-Man (2015) and … Continue reading
Movie Review: A Bigger Splash (2016)
Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino’s English-language debut entitled A Bigger Splash takes place in a specifically chosen setting at a villa hillside getaway on Pantelleria, a volcanic island that’s suspended between Italy and Tunisia on the Strait of Sicily. Conceived as an overt homage if not a complete replication of Jacques Deray’s stylish romantic thriller La … Continue reading
Movie Review: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Filmmaker and cinephile Quentin Tarantino’s celluloid occupied brain seems to resist being encumbered by meticulously absorbed cinema history, always being able to refocus his influences beyond simplistic homage and into a refreshing expressive purpose. His unique brand of creativity—admired both by actual film lovers and wannabe movie fans who think liking Tarantino equals cinematic sophistication—is … Continue reading
Generation Film! 