The Creator (2023) - Movie Review

2023, in all facets of the film industry, is likely to be remembered as ‘The Year Of AI’. Production-wise, Hollywood has seen a once-in-a-generation workers’ strike (partly) out of fears of artificial intelligence threatening the livelihood of creatives. Narratively, stories about the looming threat of replacement by machines have reached a point of relevance that, even considering sci-fi’s rich history of prescience, is still kind of bizarre to contemplate at this point in time. And on the critical side of things, it seems like every goddamn person who writes about movies has uttered some variation of “it’s as if an A.I./ChatGPT/an algorithm made/wrote this film” as a go-to criticism for films that feel assembly-line or generic. Yes, I resorted to this very thing during the year-end lists for 2022, but the extent to which it has since mushroomed into a genuine cliché is… getting kind of irritating.

At any rate, alongside films like Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1, The Creator feels like one of those emblematic releases that help define a year as a pop culture moment. That it’s one of a shrinking minority of tentpole sci-fi flicks that aren’t based on pre-existing material (directly, at least, but we’ll get to that…) adds to that battlefront mentality. What can I say, this is the kind of metanarrative shit I crave in media.

The Addams Family (2019) - Movie Review

Of all the preconceptions I’ve gone into a film with, this one marks a particularly dark possibility. Namely, while I was watching this, I was seriously hoping that none of the animators had to work in sweatshop conditions to make it. Yes, coming from the directors behind Sausage Party, in particular Nitrogen Studios head and human ringpiece Greg Tiernan, that is a legit worry. Admittedly, there haven’t been any reports yet of such things being the case with this one, but considering Sausage Party’s place as one of my few genuine problematic favourites because of what happened behind the scenes, I really hope this isn’t just Act II of the same shit. Especially since it would mean once again being conflicted over a film I enjoyed.

I, Tonya (2018) - Movie Review

 

The plot: In 1994, figure skater Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) became embroiled in a media frenzy surrounding an attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver). Intercut with “documentary footage” of Tonya, her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) and her mother LaVona (Allison Janney), the characters involved talk about what led up to that incident, from Tonya’s childhood to her achievements in figure skating, right down to just how much of that particular attack she was aware of at the time. It seems that, even for a story that has gone down into pop culture legend, there is still a lot left unsaid.

Tallulah (2016) - Movie Review

A common misguided opinion when it comes to most media is that the moral fiber of the characters translates to the quality of the work; or, in layman’s terms, having hateful people as our leads means that the film sucks. Now, even though I’ve echoed similar ideas in the past like with the Eli Roth films that I’ve reviewed on here before, I want to try and clear up that misconception. It is possible to make good stories using not-so-good characters; the entire popularity of shows like Seinfeld exists because of that very reasoning.

The problem is that the characters require the right thematic framing to work. If they’re conveyed as awful people and we’re not supposed to sympathise with them, it shows that the creator at least knows what the reality of the people in the work is. It’s when these same character traits are portrayed as something we’re supposed to agree with that things start to fall apart; unless there’s extenuating circumstances involved, finding sympathy in the loathsome is a difficult task. It’s because of this that I feel Bad Santa 2 works as well as it does… and why I honestly think that this film doesn’t. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself; we should start from the beginning.

The Girl On The Train (2016) - Movie Review

After spending far longer than I was expecting to this year complaining about movie marketing, I finally get to talk about the positives of movie marketing. Specifically, what it is capable of telling studios. The oldest rule in the medium of entertainment is to give the audience what they want, and what we spend our money on confirms that this is a thing we like to see and wouldn’t mind seeing again. It’s the cornerstone for the franchise-heavy filmmaking mindset that Hollywood has made some comfy cash on in recent years (or decades, if we’re being honest).

I say all this because, with only a passing glimpse at this film’s marketing, it is clear that the grease in the production’s gears is the success of David Fincher’s Gone Girl from two years ago. People saw that film in droves, both critics and casuals alike, and I myself would love to see more of that kind of smart and intense thriller. I’ve admitted before to my own fascination with trickery and games of wits, and no film of the last several years did a better job in those two areas than Gone Girl. But that’s where the association gets a little dangerous: This film wants to be seen as another Gone Girl. But is it capable of fulfilling that role? Hell, removed from connections to any other film, is it capable of fulfilling its role as a movie?

Minions (2015) - Movie Review

This is the only natural progression that the series could have taken after Despicable Me 2. Between the increasing popularity of the Minions and the focus being brought squarely on them over pretty much anything else in the films, the next logical step would be a film all about the gibbering creatures. The idea that they’re going right ahead and dropping the pretence that people were watching the Despicable Me movies for any another reason than to see the Minions do funny things is a very good thing in my eyes; focus only on what you need to, rather than dragging yourself down for no reason. However, this could also prove to be a rather disastrous idea. Rough analogy time: Ol’ Dirty Bastard was a fun presence on any Wu-Tang Clan song, but listening to the entirety of one of his solo albums can cause some people to overdose; too much of a good and zany thing. Here’s hoping that this isn’t the case here.

The DUFF (2015) - Movie Review

I’m going to guess that this is because I didn’t go to high school in the U.S., but labels were never really a thing when I was growing up. Sure, there were certain cliques but we only really had three of them in my year: The geeks, the smokers and everyone else. Yeah, I was a definite geek and I had great friends within that circle but I was never completely driven away from everyone else though; I would frequently talk with the others and while I made a few frenemies along the way, I was relatively comfortable with everyone in the year. If I did have a label that I wasn’t aware of, aside from the nickname “Vol-Cain-O” that I earned due to my short temper, it would have probably been "entertainer", "show-off", or maybe "sideshow attraction"; I loved being the center of attention and trying to make people around me laugh. It didn’t always work out that way, and I would occasionally get laughed at but in retrospect I’m at least glad I got some kind of reaction. With this in mind, movies about high school life never really clicked with me aside from the rare outlier like Ben X. Well, we’re already on the subject of hipster-ish choices for movies, so let’s get started.