Red Shoes And The Seven Dwarfs (2020) - Movie Review

You know a film’s marketing is bad when it manages to turn off potential audiences three years before they even get a chance to see it.

Charming (2018) - Movie Review

Our understanding of classic fairy tales has changed substantially over the last two decades. Once the vanguards of the popular contemporary takes of Happily Ever After, studios like Disney and Dreamworks have been taking a long, hard look at the olden tales and applying the thematic scalpel. From Shrek to Frozen to the slew of live-action remakes Disney has been churning out, and will continue to do so for quite a while yet, revisionist fairy tales have provided a lot of food for thought about how much perceptions have changed. Of course, with that trend comes the unavoidable cash-ins, those who see dollar signs in the act of revising and retelling these old stories but never manage to figure out why these revisions are happening. Charming, in all ways possible, fits that mould.

The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016) - Movie Review

In today’s more prominently continuation-based film economy, there is one thing that everyone can be given credit for: We’ve learnt proper continuity. Say what you will about the wavering quality standards between sequels/reboots/reimaginings and what have you, but filmmakers and in particular screenwriters know what they’re doing when it comes to making one story feel like an actual follow-up to another. We’re past the days of going from Batman Returns to Batman Forever, where the tonal shift was enough to melt your spine at a moment’s notice. Or, at least, I thought we were. And then came the trailer of today’s film, and we all collectively went pulled the head tilt that is synonymous with reading a large number of Star Wars fanfiction: Where the fuck does this fit into the canon, if at all? Is it a prequel? Sequel? Mid-quel? Attempt to create a TV series that didn't get picked up? It’s kind of astonishing that a trailer for a film can come out that raises so many questions that they actively had to make another one just to answer them as best they could. I’d make a statement about not judging films entirely by their trailers, given some of the *ahem* controversies going on at the moment concerning a release that is fast approaching, but quite frankly this is a pretty bad first impression to get. But credit where it’s due, the film itself straightens the timeline out; it just finds whole new ways to be shit.

Snow White And The Huntsman (2012) - Movie Review

It’s catch-up time again as I take a look at the predecessor to an upcoming film… or an already-released film that I didn’t get to because I was too busy spending a month brown-nosing an entire industry. This time, it’s in preparation for The Huntsman: Winter’s War, a film that already looks incredibly uninteresting even without having seen the first film. So, let’s go back to 2012: Chris Hemsworth is riding high on that Marvel wave, Kristen Stewart is trying to break away from the series that would be tied to her forever, Charlize Theron was less than a month away from either disappointing or surprising audiences with Prometheus, and I was having constant mental breakdowns in the face of my final exams for school; it was a tough time for everyone. Oh, and the world apparently ended or something, I don’t know; I think a guy on the radio mentioned it once. This was also released in close proximity to another Snow White adaptation (or re-imagining or whatever buzz word the studios wanted to use) direct by Tarsem; you know, the guy who made this waste of a film. Why do I get the feeling that the contest of lameness between them is going to be really, really close?