Film Series
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
My favorite of the Disney Star Wars films. A rugged take on the universe that almost lives up to its ambitions.
Terminator Genisys
About as bad as a movie of its kind could be. The franchise equivalent of suicide ideation.
The Matrix Reloaded
A ton of effort goes into figuring out what to do with a Kung fu movie. It can be beautiful, and it can also fall apart in your hands.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
A movie disregarded even in its own series. Flawed and beautiful as the human race it’s about.
Captain Marvel
The Marvel formula can’t save an unappealing heroine from the greatest power in her universe: herself.
Batman
Burton explores Gotham like a house inspector: he’s all about details, and forgets the emotions you need to make them worth it.
In Defense of Star Wars—The Phantom Menace
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.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
If Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was a tour of fantasy-land (who else thought their feelings seemed stuffed with baubles like gift-bags from a theme park?), The Chamber of Secrets is like accidentally wandering into the maintenance closet. Something is disenchanted by it, and I can think of no harsher criticism, to call something squinty that once was wide-eyed.
The Mummy (2017)
What was once a man’s desperate quest to resurrect his lost lover ala Dracula has been turned into a petulant girl’s desire to reincarnate the god she serves ala Suicide Squad. Could there be a more fitting beginning to this venture?
Mary Poppins Returns
When Mary Poppins pops out on stage in stockings and Mia Wallace hair I was reminded of some Mary Poppins-themed miniskirt ensembles I saw in a shop window in Disney Springs. From then on, I was half-afraid of the Banks home staging a rendition of the sexy maid porno situation. I’m fairly certain Andrews’ version would have scoffed the scanty jollity of this number in particular. I’m positive that author P.L. Travers would have wept.
Superman Returns
Superman Returns feels like a lot of charming people were motivated to do the film twenty takes ago; now they’re kind of wistful and waiting for a break. The script has the right beats but the film is filled with sleepwalkers.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Cuarón colludes with us like one of Harry’s helpful army of British character actors whispering in our ear in a language we understand without knowing, or a clever dad with a dark and silly secret. This is the first Harry Potter film that feels like an open book. It’s the best teen film ever made.
Alien: Resurrection
Alien: Resurrection is not unified by its cynicism as Robocop was. It’s not a satire of us, but just a satire of Alien movies. It’s never boring and that’s actually something, in the realm of fourth entries. The reason this film is in the category of “Everyone Else is Wrong” is not because I think it’s good, but because I don’t know what people were expecting.
Aliens: Diversity Done Right
Cinema’s strongest action lady brings us the most charming gore-fest ever made.
The Cloverfield Paradox
I have not in recent memory seen a film whose concept is more divergent from its filmmaking than The Cloverfield Paradox. It is a movie so dumbfoundingly predictable and yet so incomprehensible that it becomes meaningless even as an average film, a paradox only in the sense that its grand pretensions cannot occupy the same space as the need to connect a franchise that was never intended to be cohesive.
Alien 3
I’m aware that Alien 3 had a troubled development and a schizophrenic screenwriting cycle, all documented to any reasonable human’s satisfaction on Wikipedia. But if the result had been miraculous, Fincher would have reaped the credit as a directorial miracle worker. Blame is now the price of that possibility.
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
Superman II is exciting even in its flaws: even its badness seems to defy other kinds of movies, like so long as Superman is on top of this, everything else will be okay.
Superman
Watching the original Superman I was not filled with awe so much as a kind of quiet calm, as though a wise person had just reminded me of a well-worn truth. DC is terribly wrong. The old myths still soar.
The Godfather Part II
The film is essentially about how Michael has failed to be his father, to garner real respect, and even to be truly Italian. The failure is a well-made sequel but was it necessary? It distorts the whole picture, as though Vito Corleone died for nothing.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
If Raiders was a backyard adventure where we put on our explorer’s hat and went bucket-and-shoveling out into the woods for buried treasure, The Last Crusade is like watching a home movie of it. It’s still got the same gee-whizz endearment but in a “boy, don’t we look silly” kind of way.
A Fistful of Dollars
The result is a fantasy of movie logic that contains within it some special mystery, some lavish neo-chanbara (“sword-fighting”) crossed with that appearance of frontier Americans that young boys saw within the Wayne construct (but which, I’d venture a guess, it would not have been American for him to acknowledge).
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo has a brilliant way of keeping this theme in the shallows of its action, always present but rarely addressed directly in the ecosystem of all its wonderful ocean stuff.
Paddington 2
We’re too full of wonderment to make it back around to sarcasm, which is just cynicism in a more thoughtful form. Paddington 2 is like its main character. It doesn’t know how else to view the world but genuinely.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
No one said Pirates movies were cinematically healthy, but up till now there have been defenders of each film at least regarding tastiness. Dead Men Tell No Tales is like Davy Jones in previous films: chained to the job he was hired to do despite having no heart.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Harry possesses none of the fairytale virtues: no great strength or speed or cunning. When they were handing out panaceas, the poor kid must have been grounded. His destiny follows him, as other people make it. (“She knows more about you than you do,” Ron says.” Harry’s reply is from someone losing to his identity crisis: “Who doesn’t?”).
Hellraiser
Nothing about Hellraiser has the remotest sense of dread (besides perhaps that sense that it’ll inevitably become a franchise). Even Frank as he gradually corporealizes has the sad eyes and questionable brow anatomy you may expect less from a Barker body horror than from an alien ambassador on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The Incredibles
The film blasts an affectionate symphony of action spy movie set pieces, which Bird composes with such a self-believing style that he reminds me less of a director than of a virtuoso performer. And even they become a back-drop to what is essentially a mid-life crisis film, about a man who misses himself so much that he doesn’t even notice he has a family. Bird offers a genre fattened on mythic pretension a trimming alternative of joyous energy and dazzling characters.
10 Cloverfield Lane
10 Cloverfield Lane films with cinematography that doesn’t pander to what an audience expects, but pressures it to believe everything it says. Where normal budget horror jolts the viewer with harsh twangs and a false scare that you know is coming, 10 Cloverfield Lane never falsifies anything.
The Thing (2011)
The Thing’s lack of a stable form worked for Carpenter, who was able to squeeze a pure and palpable uncertainty out of never knowing who or what the Thing exactly was. But in Heijningen’s version, it seems to be more a matter of horror tradition than the transcription of a bold idea.