Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (2023) - Movie Review

Yep. We’re doing this. I meant what I said at the end of the Smile review: I can’t keep holding onto my experience with Lights Out, and I can’t keep holding that directly against David F. Sandberg to the point of boycotting his films out of sheer pettiness. Life’s too short for that shit. So, along with recently and finally checking out the first Shazam (it’s an alright movie, but very uneven), here I am reviewing its sequel. And quite frankly, I think life’s too short to be dealing with this either.

Strange World (2022) - Movie Review

 

It’s getting to the point where Disney’s animated films seem almost perfunctory compared to their titanic dominance over the film market in just about every other area, from their ownership of 20^th Century Fox, to Marvel movies swallowing entire release schedules whole every time they come out. This film is projected to cost Disney somewhere around $147 million, although with the impending release of Avatar: The Way Of Water, I’m sure the profit there will balance things out again. Ain’t it nice to be a corporate monolith?

Yeah, I’m being snarky here, because I wasn’t really expecting much from this. The last couple Disney Animated films were decent, but nothing all that special compared to the studio’s pedigree, and I’ve come to associate director Don Hall with mid-tier Disney, between Raya And The Last Dragon and Big Hero 6. And on top of that, as much as I kinda like the antagonist-less approach Disney has been taking with their stories for the last few years, the reliance on generational trauma to fill in the gaps is starting to wear thin (they hit their peak with that in Frozen 2, for the record). But, thankfully, I can safely say that this film turned out pretty well, in spite of its obstacles. Although it should be said that ‘safely’ is the operative word here.

Tinker Bell And The Legend Of The NeverBeast (2015) - Movie Review

It’s times like this when I’m really glad that the critical bug bit me at such an early age, because seeing these kind of movies on my own is a risky enough prospect as is. If I were to still be watching these movies well into my 30’s or even my 20’s, chances are I’d end up on some sort of government watch list before too long. Then again, as a person who has a form of opinion on the Internet, I’m assuming that I’m on several of those already. I actually saw last year’s entry in the Tinker Bell franchise as well with The Pirate Fairy; despite my understandable apprehension about the thing, I thought it was a nice little movie, if pretty forgettable. Didn’t hurt that it blind-sided me a bit as a prequel to the original Peter Pan, but nevertheless it was an okay watch. I can only hope that this one is on the same level.