post

Pastel-Plastered ‘BARBIE’ A Hilarious and Incisive Indictment of Modernity, Gender Roles

When Mattel recently announced that they would be launching their own extended cinematic universe (the Mattel Cinematic Universe, or MCU2), the internet groaned in exhausted unison. After all, what could be more unappealing in our era of modern moviemaking than yet another corporate attempt to coalesce blatant brand synergy and Hollywood’s necrotic trend of interconnectiveness, all to satisfy a company’s stakeholders and their own bottom line? From my very anecdotal research, this is simply not a thing that the movie-going public is clambering for.  No one is demanding a theatrical showcase where Hot Wheels, Sock ‘Em Robots, and Barbie team up in some kind of Avengers-style plot to take down the dastardly Hungry Hungry Hippos. And yet, Mattel is currently in some stage of development on a vast number of feature films based on just that with Hot Wheels, Magic 8 Ball, He-Man, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Polly Pocket, View-Master, American Girl, and the card game Uno all in some form of gestational pre-production. Theirs is a gloomy future that presupposes that Hollywood hits come purely from brand recognition – a future that forecasts the further sidelining of anything truly original, championing nostalgia and brand dominance over the creation of the new.  Read More

post

SXSW ’17 Review: ‘TRAGEDY GIRLS’

Mean Girls meets Scream in Tyler MacIntyre’s trendy satirical midnight horror-comedy Tragedy Girls. Like Heathers for the social media age, MacIntyre’s coming-of-age serial killer misadventure satirizes iPhone-obsessed culture as two popular girls go on a killing spree in order to gain followers, accrue likes and establish a brand. A fucked-up ode to friendship first and foremost, Tragedy Girls’ kill-happy mentality is demented no doubt but the relationship at its center sincerely (and gruesomely) cuts to the core of high school woes and the trials of BFF-dom. Not to mention, it’s bloody good fun.
Read More

post

Out in Theaters: ‘X-MEN: APOCALYPSE’

“Everyone knows the third one is always the worst,” a young Jean Grey (Game of Throne’s Sophie Turner) ironically reports, exiting a 1983 screening of Return of the Jedi. She’s right of course: Jedi is the lesser of the original Star Wars trilogy. But to her larger point: the culmination of trilogies often results in some degree of disappointment, sometimes even sullying the good name of that whence came before it. Take Godfather: Part III, The Dark Knight Rises, The Matrix Revolutions, Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, ALIEN3, Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, Terminator: Rise of the Machines and of course, Brett Ratner’s quite bad X-Men: The Last Stand. Jean’s remark, planted as it is in what is the third film of this newfangled X-Men trilogy, is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, perhaps both a potshot at Ratner’s derided 2006 entry to the franchise and a preemptive snarky parlay to the film’s inevitable detractors, because believe me when I say, X-Men: Apocalypse proves Jean Grey’s point. Read More