Tag Archives: Film

Review: The Martian

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Every movie critic wants to stand out from the crowd. There’s a joy that comes from trashing a highly popular film, and a righteous pleasure from praising a film that was critically panned or generally ignored. But lauding a film that’s cheered by both critics and moviegoers feels a little superfluous, as we’re telling people what they already know. Nevertheless, here I am to tell you that The Martin is just as good as critics and audiences alike have proclaimed. It’s a tense, dramatic story of human ingenuity and the will to survive that feels like a mashup of Apollo 13, Gravity, and Cast Away, but funnier and generally more fun than any of its predecessors. The result is a film that takes tried and true storytelling tropes and makes them feel fresh and entertaining, all anchored by a standout performance from Matt Damon, making The Martian director Ridley Scott’s best film in over a decade.

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Watching Aladdin with a Fresh Set of Eyes

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IMG_6059We all have movies we know by heart, that we’ve seen so many times they become akin to comfort food. Perhaps you pop in the DVD when you don’t know what else to watch, or when you’re doing something else and want it to play in the background. When you’ve watched something enough, the experience of watching turns into one of remembering, tuning out the present and filling the time with your memories of the very thing you could be experiencing. Aladdin was one of those films for me which I’d watched so many times I no longer needed a TV; I could just close my eyes and replay it perfectly in my head. (I distinctly remember watching the VHS three times in a row once when I was home sick from school many years ago.) But I recently got the chance to see it on the big screen for the first time in 23 years and it felt like I was seeing it with a fresh set of eyes. Time and experience can change our perspective or deepen our understanding of a film, but we so rarely take the opportunity to come at things from a new angle and recapture the sense of magic that has been softened by familiarity.

As a way to mark the upcoming Blu-ray release of Aladdin, Disney’s D23 fan club allowed people to vote on which cities would get to host a one-time screening, and luckily for me Phoenix was selected (along with Seattle and Sacremento). Continue reading →

Introducing “All-Reel Drive” – A new video series/podcast

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I’ve started a new video series and podcast called “All-Reel Drive,” in which I talk about movies while in the car commuting to work. The first episode, split into two parts, is now up on YouTube, and it’s all about the movie news from the D23 Expo! You can watch both episodes embedded below, or scroll further down for the podcast versions you can take on the go. I hope you enjoy it!

Videos

Podcasts

The podcast versions of Episode 1A and 1B are embedded below. I’ve also included links to the mp3 files, so you can download them to your computer and then upload them to the portable device of your choice. Simply right-click and choose “Save Link as…” to save it to your computer. (My goal is to eventually have them available on iTunes, but I’m not to that point quite yet.)

All-Reel Drive – Episode 1A – D23 Expo Movie Round-Up – Animation

Dowload Link

All-Reel Drive – Episode 1B – D23 Expo Movie Round-Up – Live-Action

Download Link

Thanks for watching and listening! I’d love to hear what you think!

Review: Ant-Man

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Ant-Man shouldn’t work.  Just from a conceptual standpoint, a hero who can shrink and who hangs around with insects sounds a little goofy when compared to the exploits of the Avengers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  This isn’t Asgard or SHIELD and there’s no army of alien invaders or HYDRA soldiers with which to contend, so how could it ever feel as important or impactful as other recent Marvel films?  Add in the drama over the loss of the film’s original writer/director (and strongest advocate) Edgar Wright, and the resulting film could have been an inconsequential mess, throwing a goofy idea together with a handful of jokes and some cheesy action just to be another cog (about a straight, white male, of course) in the Marvel/Disney machine.  That Ant-Man succeeds at all is a testament to the creativity of Marvel’s storytelling and the strength of its cast, but more than that it’s perhaps Marvel’s most flat-out fun film to date.

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Analysis: Jurassic World, a Movie that Hates Itself

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It might be an understatement to say that I didn’t enjoy Jurassic World.  I found it alternately boring and infuriating, a wasted opportunity.  Despite that, it’s the one movie that I’ve thought the most about in the past few weeks.  Partly it’s been hard to ignore, given its monumental box office run, but there’s something more to it than that.  As much as I disliked it, I can’t shake the feeling that there might actually be more to the movie than I gave it credit for.  I don’t mean to imply that Jurassic World is secretly great, because it’s not, but watching it I had the sneaking suspicion that writer/director Colin Trevorrow might have had a not-so-hidden message he embedded in the film through certain characters, scenes, and especially its climax.  You see, I’ve never encountered a film that seems to hate itself more thanJurassic World.

(Caution: Spoilers Ahead!)

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Friday Favorites: Favorite Scene – West Side Story

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Many of my favorite movies have that one scene that I simply have to watch.  I’m sure you have them to.  When you’re flipping through TV channels and you come across a movie that you love, you’ll sit and watch it until that one scene plays and then you’ll feel free to change the channel to something else.  For me and Jurassic Park, it’s the T-Rex attack, or inAliens it’s Ripley in the Power Loader (unless Aliens is showing on AMC, where they split the film’s finale in two so they can air 5 minutes of commercials right smack in the middle), or the Diva’s song in The Fifth Element.  This past week I was channel surfing and came across one of my all-time favorite musicals on Turner Classic, West Side Story, and I lucked out because it was right before the start of my favorite scene, the one I just have to watch.

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Review: Inside Out

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Why do we think what we think and feel what we feel?  What determines who we are and how we respond to life’s circumstances?  How can the same memory be joyous sometimes and sad at others?  Where do ideas come from?  What happens to the things we’ve forgotten?  Why does the jingle from that chewing gum commercial always get stuck in your head?  Why are dreams so weird?  Just what, exactly, is going on in people’s heads?  These are some of the many questions Pixar’s latest film, Inside Out, sets out to explore.  The result is one of the most charming, heartfelt, and poignant films the studio has ever created, as well as one of the most creative movies of all time.  It will not only make you laugh and cry, but then it’ll make you stop and consider why you just laughed and cried.

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Review: Jurassic World

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Jurassic World PosterJurassic Park is one of my all-time favorite movies, but I also believe it’s one of the most important films in the history of cinema.  It ushered in a new era of filmmaking and box office blockbusters, where anything an artist could envision could appear convincingly on the screen, while setting a standard for visual effects that is still unmatched.  It was also one of my most memorable moviegoing experiences, and to an entire generation of people my age it was our Star Wars.  It inspired us and filled us with wonder, while delivering a story, characters, and a universe that captured our imaginations and dominated the pop culture landscape.  It also had dinosaurs.  Jurassic World was seemingly inevitable, particularly in today’s nostalgia-obsessed world.  Take one of the most popular franchises of all time and update it, bringing the most modern visual effects and most popular stars to the series, and the result has been the biggest box office smash of all time.  It’s also a mess.

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Tomorrowland Analysis: There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, Just a Dream Away

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First glimpse of Tomorrowland

I’m an optimist.  I always have been, even through the roughest patches of my life.  But being an optimist is hard work, and is often ridiculed.  Today, movies filled with darkness and despair are seen as more “real,” while optimistic movies are ridiculed as being juvenile or unrealistic, and happy endings are easily dismissed by many.  So by all accounts,Tomorrowland shouldn’t exist.  Big motion picture companies don’t spend $190 million on an original science fiction film about how hope and the mere act of not giving up can save the world.  And, unfortunately, judging by the film’s mediocre results at the box office they probably won’t again in the near future.  But to continue on the path we’re currently following would be, as Casey Newton would put it, “feeding the wrong wolf.”

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Review: Mad Max: Fury Road

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In Mad Max: Fury Road, Max drives a tanker truck through a desert wasteland in order to help rescue a group of women from the psychotic warlord who is pursuing them.  That’s pretty much the entire plot of Fury Road, but it fails to capture the essence of what is one of the most intense, full-throttle, and absolutely insane action films of all time.  But to reduce Fury Road by calling it an “action movie” is to ignore the craftsmanship, storytelling mastery, and the scale of what had to go into this film.  Writer/Director George Miller has returned to his original creation 30 years after Max was last seen on the big screen and has managed to build something that feels unlike anything we’ve seen before, yet entirely at home in the universe of Mad Max combining elements of all three previous films.  On the one hand, Fury Road defies description; it’s the sort of film that must simply be experienced, preferably on the big screen.  But on the other hand, it also provides so much to talk about, from its strong feminist tendencies to its impeccable stuntwork to its brilliantly crafted visuals to its surprisingly clever storytelling.  Fury Road is simply one of a kind.

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