The School For Good And Evil (2022) - Movie Review

Y’know, I’m starting to think that Paul Feig is just a hack. After his take on Ghostbusters failed to please (and honestly, whatever defences I had for it just grow fainter in my memory in the years since I watched it), he seems to be trying to do anything except for the raunchy comedy that he showed skill at with Bridesmaids, The Heat, and even Spy. A Simple Favor had him put on his best French affectation, and yeah, it was pretty good, but that was mainly from the borrowed aesthetics rather than anything identifiably him. Then there was his attempt at a British rom-com with Last Christmas, which is still one of the most laughable misfires I’ve ever covered on here for how it mangled the songs of George Michael. And now, he’s trying to make a high fantasy school setting, some proper 1^st wave YA material, and… yikes.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2020) - Movie Review

Richard Linklater has a real fascination with using cinema to capture life’s little moments as they happen. This will come as zero shock to those who witnessed the media hypestorm surrounding Boyhood a few years back, but a lot of his oeuvre shows this in one way or another. Whether it’s musing on bygone days, focusing on a single character’s need to break out of those bygone days, or literally following the same characters/cast over several in-real-time years to bridge reality and cinema closer, it’s an aesthetic that has led to some great work. With his latest, though, I find myself questioning whether this particular moment was worth making holy.

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019) - Movie Review

John Wick may be the single most important non-superhero action franchise still active today. While Fast & Furious and Mission: Impossible may have the longevity and their respective fanbases, it’s hard to argue that John Wick didn’t still have the larger impact on the landscape. Whether it’s the fight scenes, the visual style, the kind of world-building that puts most comic books to shame, or even just the moment when people finally started to take Keanu Reeves seriously as an actor (even The Matrix, as popular as it remains, couldn’t manage that), it has captured the zeitgeist in a way that very few film franchises ever could, both past and present. And with how Chapter 2 concluded, stakes are very high for the latest in this series to measure up to the grandeur of what came before. To the surprise of likely very few, this film manages to do just that and with gusto.

The Mule (2019) - Movie Review

After the tumultuous trainwreck that was last year’s 15:17 To Paris, I’ll admit that I was somewhat hesitant to see what Clint Eastwood had in store for his next feature. I mean, I’ve gone on record about how I don’t exactly agree with his politics, but I’m still willing to admit that when he has the right material, he can pull through with some genuinely moving cinema. And with him teaming up again with writer Nick Schenk, the scribe for one of Eastwood’s true classics with Gran Torino, and stepping back into the lead role for the first time since that effort, this at least has the potential to be a step back in the right direction. Well, as I’ll get into, this definitely works… although I question some of the aspects it ends up aiming for.

Ant-Man And The Wasp (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), while under house arrest after his actions in Captain America: Civil War, gets a mysterious vision connected to his mentors Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). As he risks further imprisonment to see them, he discovers that this vision may be the key Pym and Van Dyne need to rescue Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), Pym's wife, Hope's mother and the original Wasp. As Scott once again prepares to enter the Quantum Realm, new villains lay in wait to take Pym's technology for their own purposes.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) - Movie Review

2014’s John Wick, one of the first films I covered on this blog, is one that I didn’t give nearly enough credit to the first time around. Largely due to my own inexperience in the art of critique and not knowing how to properly articulate what I think makes for good action beats (neither of which may or may not have improved all that much since), I didn’t end up giving that film its fair due in how stone-cold brilliant it is.

 

From the sharp-as-a-razor writing that I still struggle to believe isn’t directly based on a pre-existing work, to the excellent fight choreography, the finesse behind the camera, the acting, even the lighting; it is a bona-fide classic film and it finally gave main star Keanu Reeves mainstream recognition that has been long overdue. Needless to say, I was eagerly anticipating this although I honestly don’t know how it could improve on the first attempt. Well, they found a way.

Passengers (2017) - Movie Review

Movie trailers, by their very design, are rather strange devices. At the base line, they are meant to intrigue the audience into possibly checking the film in question through basically whatever means are necessary. This usually involves quick-cutting the most visually interesting moments together, combined with music that will rarely if ever be a part of the film itself. Since I made it my mission to see everything that I possibly can at the cinemas, trailers don’t have the same effect on me as they used to (for the most part, at least), but they are still interesting to watch as part of my general fascination with marketing.

Some end up underselling their film by not isolating what generally makes the film good, instead focusing on the surface moments that make it look worse than it actually is, some oversell their film by combining the film’s best moments to make the film look better than it is… and then there’s trailers like those for today’s film. Seeing as this isn’t even the only film out right now to do this, I figure it would be worth getting into with some depth before the potential flood begins: What happens when a trailer shows you a film that is markedly different from the final product?