White Noise (2022) - Movie Review

Up to this point, writer/director Noah Baumbach has operated in the chattier sectors of American indie cinema. We’ve look at three of his films on this blog already, and they have all involved intimate and unvarnished looks at families with a shared interest (or even disinterest) in the arts. And despite a couple disagreements here and there in the film craft or the framing of their central ideas, I’ve come to look forward to seeing new films from the guy. So you can imagine my surprise when his new film is a major switch-up from his usual wheelhouse.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (2022) - Movie Review

Bryan Singer’s X-Men changed superhero cinema in a big way. It proved that not only could comic book characters survive and thrive on the big screen in the new millennium, but what makes them worth reading about can effectively be translated into something watchable; this is something that superhero flicks struggled with for years prior. But I’d argue that Sam Raimi did just as much, if not more, for the sub-genre than Singer did.

Where Singer bent the edges of those characters to make them fit, Raimi instead made the cinematic artform bend to the dynamic visuals of the printed page. His Spider-Man trilogy remains a touchstone for the sub-genre to this day, and in a lot of ways, it reached heights that most of the MCU hasn’t been able to yet. So… yeah, hearing that he’d be helming a new capeshit feature had me wanting to see him come back on top, after spending the last several years either directing forgettable fluff or producing some particularly egregious horror movies.

The Grinch (2018) - Movie Review

 

While their version of The Lorax may strongly argue against this, if any animation studio was to bring another iteration of The Grinch to cinemas, Illumination are the guys to do it. Between their cartoon revivalism and their love for animated slapstick and their championing of villains that audiences love to hate, they have the aesthetic foundation to at least give this a shred of hope. I mean, the last time we got a Grinch movie, audiences landed on either the "this is awful" or "this is lame but fun" sides of the debate. Thankfully, this film is off to a good start because, whatever it has going for it, it doesn’t need to be defended as strongly.

Big Eyes (2015) - Movie Review

It’s fan-boy time again, this time looking at the newest film from Tim Burton, one of my favourite directors. Of course, openly admitting to such things isn’t exactly the safest of prospects considering his more recent output like Alice In Wonderland and Dark Shadows, some of his older work like Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Sleepy Hollow or even just the fact that his style is just that recognisable that, quite frankly, an awful lot of people are getting sick of seeing it, especially given how influential it has become. But I couldn’t give a monkey’s about any of that: I grew up watching his films from Beetlejuice to Sweeney Todd, I’ve always dug his garish yet Gothic style and I genuinely think that his cinematic sensibilities helped make me the person I am today… although, to be fair, that might just give readers another reason to hate him for all I know. Not to say that all of his films follow his usual aesthetic, as today’s film will no doubt attest ; this is the first Burton film I can remember seeing that wasn’t playing at a mainstream cinema and after seeing it, I kind of get why.

Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015) - Movie Review

It seems like there’s a lot of need in the world of internet criticism to find the next Twilight; a romantic film or series of films that can capture the cynical zeitgeist and bring us so many reiterations of “This is so bad, it’s hilarious” that we inevitably grow tired of it in record time. We’ve had a couple of flashes in the pan in recent years, like The Host and a myriad of other YA adaptations, but nothing has really latched on with audiences yet or at least in the same way Twilight did. Well, when news that the most successful Twilight fanfiction of all time (no, seriously, that’s what it started out as) was getting a film adaptation, there was much frothing at the mouth that this might be just what the doctor ordered. But how does it actually turn out?