I liked the musical numbers in The Greatest Showman. I liked them a lot! Like all good musical numbers, they help facilitate storytelling; they’re also bright, beautifully orchestrated, utterly joyful, and so compelling that I found myself tapping my feet through most of them. (The rest are not feet-tapping songs, which is to say that they … Continue reading
“When Joe Wright’s Pan moves its setting away from London and into Neverland, Peter (Levi Miller), not yet the hero we know he becomes, steps out onto the deck of a flying pirate ship to observe a strip mine jammed with filthy children singing a shanty song that sounds an awful lot like “Smells Like … Continue reading
“Your enjoyment of Chappie will depend entirely on how high a premium you place on originality. The film’s influences announce themselves loudly and proudly; if you’ve seen Short Circuit, Short Circuit 2, and RoboCop, you have seen Chappie, or at least you’ve seen its skeleton dangled from a hang-up stand á la Budget Bart. But … Continue reading
Thinking about Rise of the Guardians, Dreamworks’ latest offering, I can’t say for sure whether Pete Ramsey mixed a heart-warming, energetic childrens’ film with a story of secular subversion or vice versa. Most likely, it’s the former; there’s little doubting that Rise of the Guardians exists first and foremost to entertain and dazzle theaters full … Continue reading
I think it’s fair to say that there’s a good, perhaps even great, movie hidden deep within Jim Field Smith’s Butter, one that’s raucously funny and has bite and direction and a sense of identity. It’s just as fair to say that the film Butter happens to be isn’t all that bad, either, but it … Continue reading
On 03/17/2011, news hit that Darren Aronofsky, genius director and the man responsible for Black Swan (which we kinda liked over here), had jumped ship as the director of the sequel to 2009 fiasco and failed X-Men spin-off, Wolverine. Citing travel woes and a reticence toward being yanked away from his family for filming, Aronofsky … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 