Not long ago, legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott told historians to shut the f–k up. It’s been my experience that one does not tell others to shut the f–k up in a vacuum, not usually. In this case, there was a pretty compelling reason. While promoting his new film Napoleon, Scott was asked in an interview* to respond to criticisms of historical inaccuracy in his work. Scott responded, “When I have issues with historians, I ask: ‘Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the f— up then.'” Does Scott have a point? I think he does, but we need to be clear... Read More

Is sex necessary in movies? UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers surveyed young people (God, it kills me to say that) aged 10-24 regarding the kinds of stories told through screens.* Respondents aged 13-24 were asked about sexual depiction in movies and television. Over half of them wanted stories with a stronger focus on friendships, and forty percent felt there needed to be greater depictions of asexual and non-romantic relationships. If we look at those numbers, they tell us that a chunk of younger viewers aren’t particularly interested in the fictional depiction of the beast with... Read More

Every so often, there’s a narrative around a narrative. Specifically, a movie. Whether it’s positive, negative, or simply strange, sometimes prior to a movie’s release, we start to hear things. Rumors, conjecture, a whisper campaign designed to break a project, lift up a filmmaker, or redirect attention entirely.  One of the most famous examples of this involves a movie about a big-ass boat. The conventional wisdom around Titanic, prior to its release, was that James Cameron was going to get hosed. He’d spent a (Haw!) boatload of money making a movie that a) had no stars, b) was about... Read More

Movie critics are supposed to be impartial. That’s the common wisdom, anyway. They’re supposed to descend from their ivory towers, tuck themselves into their chinchilla-furred seats within a perfectly calibrated surround sound screening room, and receive each morsel of cinematic goodness with an equal degree of informed curiosity. That’s what’s supposed to happen. The reality is, if you follow any kind of critic or movie dork, there will inevitably be certain kinds of genres/filmmakers/actors that they…um…don’t care for! For example, a critic I read who writes for a major publication... Read More

You want to know what scares me? It’s the man with the gun. That isn’t the fun fear of the Halloween season, the entertaining chills we get from ghosts, witches, and silent mask-wearing automatons. Believe me, for my last review of October, I wanted to get into a horror movie that’s clever, entertainingly stupid, fast-paced, deliberate, restrained, or gory as hell. They’re out there, to be sure, but none of them got their claws into me. Armed real life is what scares me. After I drop my son off at school, I wonder if I’ll be notified of an active shooter. When some knucklehead cuts me... Read More

Mark my words, in the next week people are going to accuse Martin Scorsese and his film, Killers of the Flower Moon, of being racist. Sexist. Glorifying violence. Exploiting the experiences of Indigenous people. And most annoying of all, of being “woke.” This has happened to Scorsese for decades. He was accused of blasphemy with The Last Temptation of Christ,* accused of glorifying violence and the underworld with GoodFellas, and accused of glorifying violence/risky sex/drug use with The Wolf of Wall Street. The number of bad takes are seemingly endless. It’s okay if Scorsese’s work is... Read More

The endgame of most romantic comedies is to get the couple to “and they lived happily ever after.” Right? After all the meet-cutes, bouncy banter, misunderstandings that could have been easily resolved with a conversation, and tearful reconciliations, it all ends with a kiss and the assumption that the happy couple will walk into the sunset together. Okay, cool. But then what? Do they deal with the seven year itch? Have kids, then vaguely regret having kids? Slowly grow apart? Get into an expensive and time-consuming divorce? Make it all the way into their twilight years and then one of them... Read More

I don’t know if you knew this, but The Creator was released theatrically on September 29 of this year. As I write this, it’s made somewhere in the neighborhood of $32 million. Considering it had a production budget of $80 million, it’ll have to do some work over the next few weeks to break even.  So far it’s not a box office smash hit. A little research into why tells me a few factors worked against it. They are: The WGA and SAG strikes largely prevented the stars and filmmakers from promoting it. While the film features excellent actors, it has no major stars. It has a somewhat compassionate... Read More

You’ve heard from farty old film critics like me that movies have an excess of excess these days. Gigantic budgets, massive explosions and special effects sequences, and runtimes that would test even the hardiest of bladders. People complain about that now. People complained about those very same things forty years ago.  Sure, I get the bellyaching, at least to a degree. You’ve sat down at a theater for a cinematic epic. You proceed to be bombarded by superheroes, hammered by blue cat people, or slammed by historical personages. And, as the dust settles and the audience staggers from the multiplex... Read More

We don’t see too many elegant movies any longer. Why is that, I ask you? Perhaps part of the problem is that the modern cinematic landscape is separated by a vast gulf. On one side are blockbusters. They’re designed to be big, loud, and appeal to anyone with a pulse and some without. On the other side lies independent film. They’re small, scrappy, and frequently made for the nichest of niche interest. As a result, there’s very little middle ground for intelligent fare made by studios for a moderate budget. Is part of the problem that modern society is dumber and coarser? That’s an easy... Read More