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.

Ready Player One (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: In the year 2045, most of the world has been become desolate and most of the population spends their time inside the OASIS, a virtual reality containing pretty much anything a person could want. However, with the death of OASIS co-creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance), a new game has been established. Before his death, Halliday placed hidden items within the OASIS. Whoever finds all of the items first not only gets major bragging rights, but also becomes the official owner of the OASIS itself. As adventurous teen Wade 'Parzival' Watts (Tye Sheridan) tries to hunt down the items, and corporate CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) sets out to seize the OASIS for himself, the race is on to find Halliday's Easter Egg and both the virtual world and the real world hang in the balance.

Allied (2016) - Movie Review

While the popular conception of the period drama is usually confined to stuffy and immaculately dressed stories set in Victorian England, it’s actually far wider in scope than that. It basically applies to any film that is set in a specific time period that isn’t the present: Ouija: Origin Of Evil technically counts as a period piece. In staging the days of old, filmmakers need a certain level of fidelity to the era in which the story is set in order to do what all good films should be capable of and making us believe that what we are seeing isn’t something that was shot a year or two ago.

Sure, some films use that disconnect between the setting and time of release to rather compelling effect like the intentional anachronisms in A Knight’s Tale. But that’s an exception to what would ordinarily be considered the rule: If it’s set in a particular time period and the film relies on the specificity of that period, then adhering to it is probably a good idea. So, what happens when one of the most forward-thinking filmmakers still working today sets out to make a period romance?

Back In Time (2015) - Movie Review

Among the many sacred cows of the speculative fiction umbrella, the one that has probably gotten the most noise this year is the Back To The Future Trilogy. Yes, go on about how hyped people are for the upcoming Star Wars sequel, but there’s no way that you can say with a straight face that the constant quibbling about what Back To The Future Part II did/didn’t get right about its vision for the year 2015 wasn’t more prevalent than the hype for The Force Awakens. So, while other cinemas brought back the original film(s) to cinemas on the lauded day of October 21^st, 2015, some even doing it at the exact minute that the main characters arrived in the film for extra geek cred, my local arthouse theatre had something else in mind: A fan-funded documentary about the phenomenon itself. With a one-night-only showing on the big screen, and about fifty Marty cosplayers in tow (and only one Mr. Strickland, funnily enough), what self-respecting SF geek could pass it up? But how did it actually hold up? This is Back In Time, and points to you if that didn’t immediately make you start humming the Huey Lewis song. Either of them.

The Walk (2015) - Movie Review

There are very few filmmakers whom possess such a stranglehold on pop culture history as Robert Zemeckis. Whether it’s his audience-pleasing favourites like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Back To The Future trilogy, his critical darlings like Forrest Gump and Cast Away or even his cult classics like Used Cars and Death Becomes Her, the man likely owns a decent part of the collective cinematic mindset. Through his willingness to adapt not only to newer filming techniques but also to the Hollywood system at large, he has more than earned his place in the pantheon of directing greats. That, and he will also hold a very near and dear place for me personally, since he’s also one of the only directors still working today that has a consistently good track record in terms of effects work; it’s kind of astounding just how well a lot of his films have visually held up. So, when news hit that the king of dual role casting was behind a new release, it became clear that this is something I would be watching even without the whole critical routine.

Flight (2013) - Movie Review