The new The Color Purple comes down to a matter of construction. This is an adaptation not of the Alice Walker book, but of the stage musical that adapted the book, so there is a layer of removal from Steven Spielberg’s more true-to-the-text epistolary approach. What we end up getting, as so often happens with stage musicals brought to screen, is a movie that doesn’t quite work out the new value of filming the presentation, and does not formally redesign…
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Wonder Woman 1984 2020
The palpable disappointment on my four year old’s face is the most damning review of the year.
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The Fanatic 2019
Movie would be a strong word. But Fred Durst filmed something and John Travolta is in it.
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The Banshees of Inisherin 2022
It won’t be everyone’s cup of misery, but it’s certainly mine. Here is another crowning work by Martin McDonagh and his cherished collaborator Collin Farrell. Rarely does an actor-director duo so charismatically embody the best parts of the working relationship. This is not In Bruges (2008), because only that movie is that movie. Likewise, only The Banshees of Inisherin is this movie, another unimpeachable triumph. It comes as a return to form for McDonagh who last made the lightly Oscar-baiting…
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A Town Called Panic 2009
My daughter left the movie halfway through. Why, I wondered. She seemed to be loving it. I went into her room and she was staging her horse ranch and animals and playing out her own scenarios. Here’s a pic of what she was doing. Great. Sometimes we may forget from the bloated computer visualized movies, the utter and inherent joy of films reflecting toys and our minds at play. That’s how A Town Called Panic feels. It’s also just very fun.
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Mad God 2021
“I’ve just become extinct,” Phil Tippett said, learning that Jurassic Park (1993) would use computer generated dinosaurs. He is the master of stop motion, the creator of some of the most beloved movie effects. Think of those monstrous AT-ATs in Star Wars, the fantastic animated robots of Robocop (1987), the highly effective aliens of Starship Troopers (1997). Some of your favorite designs from your favorite science fiction movies, can be accredited to Tippett’s design genius. And he never did go…
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Everything Everywhere All at Once 2022
The best movies have to be movies. There’s no other way to tell their story. They are essentialist works where the very act of filmmaking is a necessity-driven fact of their being. The vision is specific. It just has to be filmed. That’s how it is with Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s (collectively, “Daniels”) latest feature. It’s everything good about cinema, everywhere, all at once.
Daniels have made the ultimate science fiction comedy. Starring the great Michelle Yeoh, the film…
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Raya and the Last Dragon 2021
Dear Ezra,
I know. Quarantine is hard on everyone. But for the developing mind of a child, it is almost unthinkable. I know, when you ask when your friends can come over, you no longer expect a result. When you ask if you can go ice skating or do ballet lessons, that we both realize the reality of the moment. That when you ask when we go to the movie theater, I realize very well how much it meant to…