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.

The Witches (2020) - Movie Review

There was always going to be some level of disappointment to this for me personally. I’ve gone on record about how Nicholas Roeg’s The Witches is one of my all-time favourite movies, and the idea of something coming along that can do that story better seems unlikely. But to give this production credit right off the bat, all the pieces are certainly in place for something that can at least stand out from the original, if not ascend it. Between Robert Zemeckis as director/co-writer, who knows how to use cinema technology to tell a gripping story, and creature feature maverick Guillermo Del Toro teaming up with creator of the -ish franchise Kenya Barris to add to the script, there’s a chance for this to take the source material into an interesting new direction. But while there’s certainly traces of that intent in here, it still can’t manage to escape the shadow of its predecessors.

Welcome To Marwen (2019) - Movie Review

This film was supposed to have gotten a theatrical release this year. I’ll be damned if I saw any evidence of that, though. We went from fairly frequent trailers for this to just… nothing. Until it popped up for home video release, this might as well have not even come out over here. While the current Hollywood structure is turning this scenario into what looks to be a regularity (what with Disney shelving so many of Fox’s releases after buying them out), this still doesn’t make sense.

This is Robert Zemeckis, one of the vanguards of American cinema and a filmmaker who has always been on the cutting edge of what film technology is capable of; how did his latest feature end up being left at the wayside? Well, while I’m certainly not going to make the argument that this film never should’ve have seen release, I will admit that I at least understand why this film would have been… deprioritised, as it were.

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?

Top 20 Best Films Of 2015

Well, after spending the last few posts wallowing in my own misery, time to shake off that bad mojo for good as I look at the Top 20 best films that I had the pleasure to see last year. While, in comparison, it wasn’t as good as 2014 as a whole, it still produced some truly amazing works of cinema that deserve to be watched and re-watched. I know that I mentioned a disdain for honourable mentions before, but then again, I’ve used honourable mentions myself in last year’s lists so hypocrisy shouldn’t be anything new. That said, I still want to give a special shout-out to Hitman: Agent 47, the Best Worst Film of the year. This is the film that was just so awful that it actually reached entertainment from the other end, thanks to its terrible acting, writing and special effects. Now for the official, legitimately good picks of the litter.

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