When the trailers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem first came out, I was a little bit skeptical, mostly because the 2007 animated film felt uninspired and later Michael Bay did his level best to destroy yet another beloved institution of my childhood. It had been a long time since the original TV cartoon … Continue reading Shell-tered Youth – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
This has not been a good year for horror films thus far. It's not that big of a deal, as there's usually one major genre that suffers a lapse in quality every year, but for 2023 it's been particularly grim. There is the odd bright spot, like Evil Dead Rise (which I didn't see, as … Continue reading The Hand of Fate – Talk to Me
Normally I'd begin this column with a statement about how August is essentially the second month of the year unofficially designated as a studio dumping ground. We're at the end of Blockbuster Season, which means most of the tentpole movies have had their moment in the spotlight - for better or worse - and that … Continue reading This Film is Not Yet Watchable – August 2023
There have been a lot of movies over the last decade based on consumer products. Most of them are thinly-veiled, feature-length commercials. But every once in a while, a film breaks through and becomes an essential part of our cultural conversation, like The Lego Movie. We can safely add Greta Gerwig's Barbie to that short … Continue reading Life in Plastic – Barbie
Christopher Nolan has made his name as a filmmaker through two basic avenues. One is his Dark Knight trilogy of movies featuring Batman. The other is in complex narratives that play on the elasticity of cinema itself to tell high-concept stories out of sequence or in ways that mess with basic timeline structure (Memento, Inception, … Continue reading Theory and Praxis – Oppenheimer
When I was in the sixth grade, I participated in my first school play. It was an inane "musical" called The Case of the Missing Part of Speech. I shit you not. The whole "show" lasts for about 30 minutes, involves the cast collectively singing ditties about nouns, verbs, and prepositions (our production actually cut … Continue reading Next in Show – Theater Camp
Whatever your personal opinions may be when it comes to Tom Cruise as a person - and believe me, I have some issues - it's still important to note that over the last few years, he's been the driving force in saving the theatrical model of the film industry. When he insisted that Top Gun: … Continue reading The Human Element – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
There's an overarching theme in Joy Ride about the uncertainty and insecurity that people experience when it comes to their cultural heritage and personal identity. Throughout the course of the riotous road trip romp, the emotional core always comes back to the idea of figuring out who you are and where you came from, both … Continue reading Identity Slapsticks – Joy Ride
If you're a regular reader, you know that I have a few default settings when it comes to how I judge movies. Like any human being I'm not always 100% consistent in my takes, as one, there are exceptions to every rule, and two, sometimes I just forget in the moment depending on how a … Continue reading A Shot Across Disney’s Bow – Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken
We're halfway through the year, and as we go into July, I have to say, things don't look half bad. While the major tentpole movies of the 2023 Blockbuster Season have largely fallen flat, on the whole the general output for mainstream media hasn't been all that terrible. Yes, Indiana Jones disappointed to an extreme … Continue reading This Film is Not Yet Watchable – July 2023
I Actually Paid To See This 