They Shot the Piano Player (2024)
Spanish director Fernando Truaba is one of those [...]
Archive for July, 2016
Nerve (2016)
Nerve is a safe, tepid treatment of a subject that is so current you’d swear the movie was made only yesterday. It’s about our all-consuming obsession with apps and online games that arrives just at the moment when half of the country is mired in ‘Pokémon Go‘ and the other half wishes they’d just put […]
Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)
Batman: The Killing Joke clears up the most aggravating problem that I have with the latest glut of superhero movies – the producers always seem afraid to let their characters be characters. As much as I’ve praised the recent spate of Marvel movies, I must admit that underneath my admiration there always rests a tiny […]
The Persistence of Disney, Part 2: Pinocchio (1940)
Kid’s movies don’t deal with consequences anymore. In today’s society, we are so afraid of scaring kids straight that we avoid it all together, particularly in their media. It’s important to notice how few modern movies made for children really deal with the issues they face, or the consequences of ignoring the warning signs. Child […]
Ghostbusters (2016)
Well . . . at the very least you can say it’s better than Ghostbusters 2. Amid all the gnashing and biting over this movie in the past two years, I have tried to remain mum about it. The movie is unnecessary, for sure, but in the end it isn’t the disaster that the naysayers […]
Lights Out (2016)
Is it odd to suggest that a movie that only runs 81 minutes might need trimming? That thought occurred to me all through Lights Out a nugatory little horror outing that has a clever premise but is padded out with loads of uninteresting characters and family drama that, truth be told, only gets in the […]
The Persistence of Disney, Part 1: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Dali studied The Persistence of Memory. I study The Persistence of Disney. As it has been in the past, Disney owns the landscape of film animation despite fierce competition from other studios. This hasn’t always been the case. Throughout it’s 90 year history, this company has become a multi-cultural phenomenon that has managed to stay […]
The Secret Life of Pets (2016)
The timing may be tricky for The Secret Life of Pets which has the misfortune of arriving in the shadow of Finding Dory, a surprise hit that has already raked in over $400,000,000 domestic. That film, which has been at the top of the charts for the past two weeks surprised everyone not only by […]
