Is Wes Anderson a good filmmaker? Does he make good films? The thing is, those are two separate and different questions. He’s got such a distinctive visual style and way of storytelling that even if you’ve never seen one of his movies, you probably have a pretty good idea of what they’re like. Or…hell, maybe you don’t! Let’s go over a few details to help you identify Anderson’s work, should you encounter it in the wild. Anderson likes to work with the same people as much as possible. He’s helped to recontextualize and launch the careers of actors like Bill Murray, Owen Wilson,... Read More

Prequels are terrible. That is, until they aren’t. It used to be that the idea of checking out the earlier adventures of beloved characters was nothing more than a craven cash grab. You had the tomfoolery of Butch and Sundance: The Early Years, the nonsense of Hannibal Rising, and the blatant idiocy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Done well, a prequel can add texture and character to a franchise. It can fill in the blanks and even recontextualize the original work. Despite the clunky execution, mostly poor acting, and thunderingly obvious storytelling, George Lucas deserves credit. His Prequel trilogy... Read More

Anything can be funny, right? There are two schools of thought, there. The first is the theory that anything has the potential to be amusing. Comedy is all about puncturing bubbles of pretention, going after targets that deserve skewering. As long as the joke teller is punching up instead of punching down, the only limitation is their imagination. The other school of thought is that some subjects are too sacrosanct to be mocked and to even attempt them is, at best, in poor taste. We wouldn’t dream of making fun of the Nazis, right? Ah…as a matter of fact, we would! There’s a long and... Read More

“A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts.” That quote comes from the under-loved Avengers: Age of Ultron. Upon its 2015 release, we were 11 films deep and there were two schools of thought about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a sprawling epic of interconnectivity. Eager nerds like myself were excited. Comic book creators and imagination machines like Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Steve Ditko used these characters, perhaps unwittingly, as a kind of modern mythology. There were lessons of tolerance, justice, decency. You could take something of real value away from the adventures of a bunch of... Read More

What do we mean when we talk about whitewashing? It’s a practice that’s been around since the beginning of cinema, and it’s the practice of casting white actors in roles that were either originated by non-white actors or should have been played by non-white actors. Maybe when you hear that term, you think of older films from a less enlightened time.* Examples like whites in blackface in Birth of a Nation, Mickey Rooney’s breathtakingly racist portrayal of a Japanese man in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, or Natalie Wood playing a Puerto Rican teen in West Side Story.... Read More

With a few exceptions, nobody sets out to make a bad movie. Whether the filmmakers are confident or delusional, they start out with good intentions. But here’s where it gets tricky. In order to make a good movie, you need a compelling story, interesting characters, and a way to bring the two together organically. Sounds easy, right? It gets even harder when we move into the world of blockbuster filmmaking. You have to factor in massive budgets, the desire of nervous executives stifling risk in order to maximize profits, and inexperienced directors getting swallowed up by their project.*... Read More

Every week before I see the movie I end up reviewing, I talk to my kid about it. He’s 8 years old, bright, and possesses a goofy sense of humor. Sometimes he’s interested in what I’m going to see. Other times, his attention is captured by more lofty subjects.* I mentioned offhandedly to him that I was considering seeing The Jungle Book, the latest version of Rudyard Kipling’s venerable collection of stories. With the speed of a feral man-cub, he grabbed both sides of my face, leaned in close, and hissed, “I’m coming with you.” Having barely escaped a... Read More

For anybody who likes movies, especially those of us who are approaching or have already reached a certain age, there’s a temptation to drag out the hoary old chestnut of, “They don’t make ’em like they used to.” That statement is the rhetorical equivalent of Schrodinger’s Cat, where it is both true and false at the same time. Please allow me to explain. On the one hand, as long as there have been movies, the majority of them have been garbage. Jump onto your favorite search engine and plug in any year you care to name. You’ll see that no matter the... Read More

  In 2008, the fledgling Marvel Studios released Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. Before the release, there were rumblings that the film would fail, and fail big. How could it succeed? It was a movie about a superhero that only hardcore nerds like me had heard of. Plus, Downey was best known not as a phenomenally talented actor, but as a drug addict. The guy was a huge risk to headline a summer blockbuster. But with a worldwide gross of over $580 million, Iron Man was a gigantic hit, and it guaranteed two things. First, it created the birth of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) which... Read More