Fixing Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a well-meaning jumble that I hope to make sense of with these changes.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a well-meaning jumble that I hope to make sense of with these changes.
The 22-film climax delivers on fireworks but passes up its themes. Here’s my full analysis.
This decade saw new studios created and old ones bought. Here’s my pick for the 100 Best Movies of the 2010s.
With The Rise of Skywalker coming out, I wrote my final evaluation, for good and bad, of one of the most debated movies ever.
I’m not buying what this trailer is selling. Here’s why.
The sequels changed this movie. Its ego now shows through its history, though its action still satisfies.
The talk of what it means to be a Mary Sue has gotten so emotional that I think it’s time for the term to disappear. But not before my final word.
An ensemble cluster of action and color anchored by one of the best villains in the genre. The series’ most essential film.
Beautiful animation complements a pretty bare story about proving yourself even when you have nothing to prove. Not the studio’s best.
An extravagant mystery, deeply brilliant. Where mainstream meets noir and makes them both seem like a good idea.
An alternative to the modern rejection of fairytales. Why true love never goes out of style.
An analysis of Villeneuve’s dreamy horror film. Not for the faint, the arachnophobic, or the easily confused.
The Phantom Menace is unformed as a child’s drawing, and sometimes feels as innocent, and many times threatens through sheer force of will to be charming.
It’s so admirable you’ll forget the flaws in its execution. Mainstream horror with an intellectual twist.
Cinema’s strongest action lady brings us the most charming gore-fest ever made.
This is a film made with the intention of proving that black actors should not be typecast as thugs, yet part of its comedic scheme is the counter-marginalization that all white people are colonizers. Black Panther admirably opposes prejudice when it’s directed at certain groups, but I would have preferred it, especially if its goal was “elevation,” to oppose all prejudice equally.
A grimy movie that you might enjoy, provided you identify at least a little with the weirdos that live in it.
Merely a below-average comedy that becomes a slog by whoring out its cast for an ill-conceived marketing angle.
Art isn’t just a product: it’s a testament to the beliefs that made it. What beliefs does Peter Rabbit celebrate? A belief in art or analytics, in magic or in marketing? I remember thinking the same of Kangaroo Jack, of which Peter Rabbit is more a successor than to Potter. At least it’s so disparate from itself that it says nothing about her and everything about us.