Pinocchio (2022) - Movie Review

While Snow White And The Seven Dwarves may have been where Disney’s animated film history started, along with their canon of Disney Princesses, their 1940 film version of Pinocchio is arguably where Disney as an artistic aesthetic began. The iconic soundtrack, to the point where When You Wish Upon A Star has essentially become the official anthem for Disney, the elegant use of metaphor in its depiction of a child self-actualising, the timeless animation, that horrifying donkey transformation scene (which likely gave birth to an entire generation of Cronenberg fans); it’s a well-deserved classic.

And it is also the latest film to get pulped and sifted in the modern Disney remake machine, and between the icy reception it’s garnered already and me losing all hope in these things being good anymore after Aladdin and The Lion King, I was fully expecting to hate this. Guess I’ve found my big dissenting opinion for the year, because I actually quite liked this.

Murder Mystery (2019) - Movie Review

Having covered all of the previous Happy Madison Netflix features, I freely admit that I didn’t go into this film expecting anything all that decent. And sure enough, in record time, that feeling of déjà vu kicks in with the usual hallmarks of an Adam Sandler production: Prominent in-your-face product placement with the Amazon gift card (wow, is this not a good time to be shilling out for them), Sandler’s wife being cast in a role meant to show off how hot she is (she’s literally billed as ‘Great Looking Flight Attendant’), and the story as a whole is a thinly-veiled excuse for a European vacation, just like the last time Sandler and Jennifer Aniston got together with Just Go With It.

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?

Fast & Furious 6 (2013) - Movie Review

It’s catch-up time again on this blog, this time as part of the lead-up to Fast & Furious 7. I remember getting a triple DVD pack of the first three films in the franchise for Christmas one year and getting a tad obsessed with them for a time, to the point where they got me interested in racing games like the Need For Speed series just to further feed that hunger for high-octane ridiculousness. Honestly, it’s kind of spellbinding that what started out as a loose adaptation of a Vibe magazine article about an anonymous street racer has since turned into the primary action franchise of the 2000’s. The fact that this evolved out of a Rob Cohen film only makes this more confounding. So, before we get into the seventh instalment, time to check out the one that came.

The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies (2014) - Movie Review

 

Peter Jackson may serve as one of the greatest cinematic success stories in recent memory: From his humble beginnings with bat-shit insane cult films like Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles and Braindead, he went on to craft himself as a directing legend through his adaptation of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, making himself one of the most critically and financially successful filmmakers of all time. Not only that, Weta Digital, a special effects company co-founded by Jackson himself, has also become a powerhouse in Hollywood due to their work on the LOTR films and have gone on to do SFX work for films like Avatar, The Avengers and the Planet Of The Apes reboot series. Today’s film marks the end of an era, as after 13 years and over a thousand minutes of screen time, this is the (supposed) final film Peter Jackson will make based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.