Deconstructing the machinery of cinema.
If there is a topic that seems to dominate among film geeks this year, it is Walt Disney's growing program of live-action adaptations based on their animated back catalogue. It was only back in late May that I wrote: 'It is a program of films powered by crass commercialism and audience nostalgia, and most of ...
One of the best films I have ever seen about art is Julian Schnabel's 1996 biographical drama Basquiat, which related the brief career of its titular New York contemporary artist. The film introduced me to Schnabel - a fine artist moonlighting as a film director - as well as its brilliant star Jeffrey Wright, of whom ...
Hollywood is, if nothing else, opportunistic. Take as an example Lamont Johnson’s 1983 science fiction adventure Spacehunter: Adventures In the Forbidden Zone. One-part space opera, one-part Mad Max pastiche, it took advantage of a then-new technique for shooting feature films in stereoscopic 3D – a novelty that had been popular in the 1950s but proved ...
Here's a thing: if you are reading this from North America and are of a sufficient age, you probably remember a 1984 made-for-television film named The Ewok Adventure. It was a spin-off from 1983's Star Wars sequel Return of the Jedi, and saw two human children get rescued from a crashed spaceship by the cuddlesome Ewoks of Endor ...
In the early 14th century, two knights (Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman) fleeing from the Crusade are given a choice: face justice for their desertion, or escort an accused witch to a remote monastery in order to be judged. Accompanied on their journey by a priest, a trader, and a young aspiring knight, they soon ...
In the aftermath of the events of Avengers: Endgame, a grieving Peter Parker (Tom Holland) must cope with the death of his mentor as well as a gap of five years between dying along with half of the Earth's population and being spontaneously brought back to life. Desperate to go on vacation in Europe and ...
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was a box office flop in 2016, promoted widely as a laugh-out-loud comedy starring Tina Fey (30 Rock) and Margot Robbie (I, Tonya) but generating complete disinterest among audiences and disappointment among critics. The actual film is hardly a comedy at all, of course, and simply employs satirical elements to express its cynicism ...
