Delight is not a word you often associate with a Quentin Tarantino film, but damn if you don’t leave Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with a smile on your face. The delight is usually QT’s, who every few years gets to share his latest pastiche, a focused fever dream informed by childhood obsessions of […]
Is anyone actually this nostalgic? Beneath the song and dance and snappy dialogue in the new Lion King is a feeling of resignation and inevitability. This reenactment—remake would imply that something is different from the beloved 1994 animated film—fails to explain to puzzled audiences why it exists at all. It’s not live action like Cinderella […]
Did Stuber get greenlit because of its name, or in spite of it? Whatever its origins, it’s bad. Really bad. The kind of bad where even when it does land a solid gag, you’re so frustrated that you don’t even grant it a chuckle, out of pure resentment. Its charismatic leads Kumail Nanjiani and Dave […]
The first question that will inevitably come up regarding Spider-Man: Far From Home is: How does it compare to the other screen portrayals that followed Sam Raimi’s landmark films? But let’s be honest, that train of thought goes nowhere useful. In terms of superhero movies and blockbusters in general, almost nothing is on par with […]
When a horror movie reaches a certain level of pedigree or critical acclaim, it’s common in some circles to find any word other than “horror” to describe it. “That was just a really scary drama.” Or, “I think it was more of a thriller,” a genre that can overlap but is still distinct. “Post-horror” is […]
Somehow, against all odds and conventional wisdom of movie sequels and their diminishing returns, the Toy Story series just keeps getting it right. The mere fact that there is a conversation about which is the best one shows just how successful it is. No one says the same about Incredibles 2, Monsters University, or Cars […]
The trope of “John Shaft is a dirty old man” is barely enough material to build a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, let alone an entire movie. Yet here we are, the fifth entry in a once-breakthrough series (the third to be titled simply Shaft), and the most we can muster is a sometimes tolerable but […]
The conclusion of the X-Men franchise was never going to be great, but it didn’t have to be this bad. Back when the first film came out in 2000, the idea of a series of sustained and even quality films based on comic books had not solidified—Superman, Batman, and Blade all started strong but saw […]
As other non-Marvel cinematic universes either crumble (Dark Universe), or limp along on life support between occasional jolts of excitement (DCEU), the MonsterVerse has been slowly gaining momentum like a long-dormant giant. It started in 2014 with Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, a technically solid monster flick with excellent creature design that was unfortunately more invested in […]
The 1961 defection of Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev in Paris sent shockwaves through the artistic and political worlds—both East and West. The USSR was embarrassed that such a prominent figure slipped through its grasp, while the rest of the world now had the privilege of witnessing the raw, unencumbered, uncensored talents of one world’s […]