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Exhaustingly Excessive Actioner ‘BULLET TRAIN’ is Pure Joyless Destruction 

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Snakes On a Train

The scourge that is the 2022 summer movie season continues with the loud, ultra-violent, and ultimately entirely mindless Bullet Train. Best known for the John Wick franchise, Deadpool 2, and the Fast and Furious spin-off Hobbs and Shaw, writer-director David Leitch is a creator of quickly diminishing returns. Here, he delivers an algorithmic Guy Ritchie wanna-be crime whodunnit packed with movie stars and the popular “gun-fu” combat style the former stunt man helped pioneer but short on actual plot locomotion and charm. All set on a train! It’s not an entirely feckless ride, the game performances are just enough to power the film forward and keep the groans to a minimum, but it’s as disposable as it is bloated with wanton destruction. For a movie this unconcerned with logical collateral fallout, one that childishly gawks at violence, it sure does have a strange amount of references to Thomas the Tank Engine. Read More

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‘THIRTEEN LIVES’ Explores the Depths of Human Ingenuity and Bravery in Workmanlike Retelling

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It Takes a Village

Thirteen Lives, Ron Howard’s dramatic retelling of the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue, takes an understatement approach to heroics, swerving away from the dramatic fanfare and teary-eyed grace notes of a typical Hollywood feature and relying instead on something more workmanlike, cut-and-dry, and almost minimalist. The true story that inspires Thirteen Lives has already been brilliantly told in National Geographic’s 2021 documentary The Rescue and Howard largely offers an unfussy translation of those events, without a lot else. In some senses, it could be argued that this feature film is an unnecessary addition to the story as it doesn’t provide any significant new wrinkles to the story as told by documentarians Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. But Howard’s ability to turn historical drama into nail-biting cinema makes this a worthwhile venture nonetheless, even for those acquainted with the details.
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‘NOPE’: Spielbergian Sci-Fi Falls to Earth, Proves Jordan Peele is Human

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Icarus Who Flew Too High…

The name Jordan Peele carries weight. The sketch comic turned horror auteur cut his teeth mocking the familiar. Often quite brilliantly. His skill as a caricaturist made Peele the perfect tool to spin something new from the weathered clichés he so often lampooned. He – more than most – knew the difference between frail and fresh. You mock enough knock-offs and you become the expert on what hasn’t been attempted yet. In time, the satirist became a sacred commodity. From his mind, two horror greats (Get Out, Us) were born. Nope, Peele’s third feature film, is one of the most hotly anticipated films of the summer, if not the entire year. All because of Jordan Peele. Read More

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Waititi’s ‘THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER’ As Aimless, Superfluous As The MCU’s Phase 4 Writ Large 

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Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Kill the Gods

It’s probably safe to define Thor: Love and Thunder, the fourth film in the main Thor series and eighth total appearance by Chris Hemsworth as the titular character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, by what it is not. It is not as good as its predecessor Ragnarok. Going a step further, I’d wager to say that it’s likely the worst of the Thor-central flicks – the often maligned Thor: The Dark World included. It’s not well constructed; the story is jumbled and meandering, the tone is all over the place, the character arcs are fairly uninvolving and flat. It’s not as funny as it thinks it is; the jokes mustering some low-grade chuckles here and there but nothing at the level of writer-director Taika Waititi’s best work – nor is it even on par with Marvel’s better comedic showcases. In short, it’s just not very good. Read More

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‘MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON’ A Delightful and Subtly Profound Mediation on Life (As a Shell)

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Compared to What?

In 2010, the world met Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, a tiny anthropomorphic shell fitted with even tinier pink shoes, a sole googly eye, and a can-do attitude. The short film featuring Marcel was an endearing mockumentary about the trials and tribulations of a single shell’s life. The eponymous character did things like drag a piece of lint around on a hair like a dog while saying, “A lint is a shell’s best friend.” The short garnered 11-million views on YouTube and a legitimate cult following. The enthusiastic shell with many a quotable one-liner became a household name and the original short eventually begat a few short sequels, a couple spin-off storybooks, and, well over a decade later, an actual movie.  Read More

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‘CRIMES OF THE FUTURE’ Surgically Digs Into Society’s Bulging Guts

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Surgery is the New Sex

The Canadian King of Venereal Horror, David Cronenberg, puts the perfectly bewildering capstone to his legacy of gross, mind-bending body horror with his latest feature Crimes of the Future. At once an exploration of the horrors of the post-post-modern human evolutionary track and a not-too-subtle cry for radical environmentalism, the 79-year old director’s latest stroke of squeamish cinema is a fitting encapsulation of the creator’s  entire demented body of work.   Read More

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‘TOP GUN: MAVERICK’ Offers Peak Blockbuster Thrills, Exceeding Original On Every Front

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Cruise. Control. 

A legacy sequel that could have easily been nothing more than unnecessary nostalgia bait, Top Gun: Maverick is instead a tour de force blockbuster that reminds us of the joys of watching movies at the theater. After two years of wondering what the future of in-person cinema would look like in a post-Covid era, the high-flying feature from director Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, Only the Brave) recalls the aspirational magic of the theatrical experience by looking back at what came before while also graciously paving the path forward. Read More

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Kafkatesque ‘MEN’ Favors Allegory, Mood Over Plot

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Men? Meh.

If we feel pain, are we doomed to it? Writer-director Alex Garland’s latest film, Men, is plagued by this one idea: the cyclical, unwavering nature of pain and abuse. Jessie Buckley is Harper, a woman suffering. After a traumatic incident involving her former husband (Paapa Essiedu), Harper retreats to the English countryside to find some quiet away from the city and the life she shared with her ex. While she intends to give herself space for emotional healing, Harper instead finds an intrusive, hellish male community seemingly dead-set on breaking her down further. Events turns more weird, then utterly hellish. Read More

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When Sam Raimi Lets Loose, ‘DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS’ Is Pure Dark Magic. Otherwise, Meh.

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Not Quite What the Doctor Ordered

The multitude of successes and failures of the larger MCU brand is put on full display with its most recent entry, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The film directed by Spider-Man and Evil Dead director Sam Raimi, more than any other Marvel effort to date, underscores issues of creative overlording (Kevin Feige, master of the box office, checking in) that has long plagued the comic book production house. The push and pull between actual directorial style and ownership of said style and the larger corporatized Marvel Brand has never been so readily apparent in the finished product, resulting in one of Marvel’s most split-identity entries to date. One that also houses some of its most daring and dazzling segments across all of its 28 films and six Disney+ TV events. Read More

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‘THE NORTHMAN’, A Life of Death

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Heavy Metal 895

Robert Eggers finds the language of a movie before anything else. Drawing up the screenplay for The Witch, Eggers studied journals, diaries, and anything from the early days of American settlers that he could get his hands on. Through their particularly dated parlance, he crafted a haunting vision of religious fervor gone amuck in a haunted New England wood. For his sophomore feature, The Lighthouse, Eggers looked to the vernacular of folklore, myths, and seamen, spinning spittle-infused soliloquies about mariner curses on the 1890s high seas. His salty dialogue matched perfectly with Willem Dafoe’s wide-eyed delivery. With The Northman, Eggers pairs with Icelandic poet Sjón to find the language of the 9th century Nordic people. And their language is violence. Read More