Wanders from MCU standards without completely losing the trail, and every strange cranny it finds proves enlivening.
Deep Water gets bogged down by familiar and pedantic elements of an erotic thriller that feels 65 years old.
A perfectly fine little film with engaging characters, parent-appealing cultural throwbacks, and the familiar message to embracing yourself.
We will remember damage, to mangle a repeated line from the show. It’s cathartic to imagine what we will do with it.
It’s the glorious little moments that bring me the greatest delight, so, I give you a list of my favorite TV moments of 2021.
It’s a movie from a filmmaker who’s sat with herself for much longer, sorted some things out, and is working in a culture that’s just beginning to catch up to her.
Miranda gets across a deep, earnest appreciation of Larson, Garfield plunges into the melodrama, and the film becomes a fitting homage to a man whose work is both important and worthy of critique.
“I don’t have a very good answer for you.” Uncertainty is the core of The…
No, the myth that superhero movies have to choose between being bombastic, money-making productions or contemplative allegories is just that, a myth, and Zhao had the potential to bring the false dichotomy crashing down. Unfortunately, the picture she’s made may just reinforce it.
It’s full of hope for everything [Hansen-Løve] loves and goodwill for what she lets slip away.
Even with this less than glorious landing, the sheer swing of such an off-kilter structure that still lavishes in all the expensive trappings of castles, gowns, and armaments is such a novelty that it’s hard to resist admiring it.
This is how you put people to sleep, if you’re lucky enough not to piss them off.
Their Tammy Faye is a caricature masquerading as a real person. The assertion that they find out who she really is, or even present a twisted, subjective version, is nothing but a beautiful lie.
These mild ups and downs leave us with a lackluster entry in a franchise saddled with ambitious but thorny ideas. It’s far from a disaster, but the taste it leaves in your mouth isn’t sickening so much as it is bitter. Horror with these sorts of themes shouldn’t leave you feeling good, but the discomfort should come from it rattling uncomfortable truths, not mishandling them.
Smaller in scale than recent outings and less afraid of its characters’ emotions, it introduces the wayward but destined for greatness Shang-Chi with plenty of the tricks the MCU used to create its box office supremacy while finally pushing the series in a mildly different direction.
The show itself is decidedly not about glory, instead twisting itself into a pitch black comedic nightmare where every garish color and perfected pose covers a wellspring of pain and anger.
Jungle Cruise is not the artistically devoid offering you may have feared, but it’s not stretching itself to be anything too great, either. Instead, it settles for being a lark, and its winning cast nails the frivolous good time it aims to be.
Betty is a disrupter. A disrupter of expectations, of stereotypes, of procedure. It says forget six seasons and a movie, we’re going to make a movie and then some television. It says forget your straight, white, male world, we’re going to follow a bunch of young women, some queer and not all white. It says forget plot, just vibe.
That Black Widow doesn’t find the right way to tell one of [the MCU’s] most serious stories to date is frustrating, especially considering it comes off as a mere tepid misfire.
In stripping away (or not building upon) the character beats and the hanging existential dread, they produced a lean, mean little thriller, one that satisfies in the moment but ultimately builds to nothing.
Mainstream, though, is here to pass judgement, and it hands down a broad, overreaching ruling that isn’t specific enough to chill.
In the wake of these satisfying battles, the lightness with which the humans are handled isn’t a killjoy.
A movie that is fascinating in its first half, which is basically a feature-length setup full of promising starts and weird asides, but peters out as the plot kicks in and real structure must be applied. It thrives on Snyder’s idiosyncrasies , and while I can’t in good conscience call it a success, it’s just about the best such an ill-conceived mess could’ve ever become.
These scraps of something bolder make Raya feel much more safe than it really is. A couple of no holds barred princesses and a whole new world for Disney provided so many opportunities for expansion that it’s disappointing they only took partial advantage. Hopefully they continue pushing forward, because Raya’s only downside is Disney’s self-imposed limitations.
Moving forward, the deficiencies of this season should help answer its central question. How does one rewrite history through television, or perhaps more accurately, why? The first season’s screwy, boisterous energy provides a perfect answer: we rewrite as an act of compassion and hope.
I Care A Lot plays a tough game. It’s not an unfamiliar one, not by a long shot, but that doesn’t make it easy to stomach. A tale of greed and capitalism that can’t even be called allegory since it speaks of its themes directly, it’s a story of terrible people doing terrible things, and you’re not supposed to feel good about any of it.
The World to Come, is, you guessed it, a period romance between two white women. That unfortunately places it on a continuum that’s become stale, meaning something extra is required of it to stand out. And that’s where the movie falls a bit short, not with any big flaw but in not achieving anything truly great, and hence it seems doomed to fade into the ether.
No amount of slick story beats and scene chewing from Washington, Malek, and Leto can save such a thoughtlessly outdated premise.
Happiest Season knows the moment it’s in and how much it can push the boundaries, and it doesn’t dare come anywhere close to the edge. The win is simply getting an adequate one out there that everyone, not just queer people, will feel the need to see, and then not be put off seeing more. And in that sense, it plants its flag firmly so others can follow.
No, Euphoria is not reality, but that’s not what television is here for, is it? At its best it does what every quality story strives to do: to tell a truth in a way that people will pay attention to, often in a heightened, flashy way, and sometimes with copious amounts of drugs and sex.
This is as much a meditation on the lasting effect of these people as it is a tale of their accomplishments and failures, so no, you shouldn’t really be looking at any of this as reality.
The Half of It clips along beautifully, giving you all the sweet charm of your favorite rom-coms while also giving you some thoughtful meditation on what love is (even if it is filtered through teens).
Tigertail is a swift 96 minutes long, but it’s one of the few movies where I’d recommend it going longer, using the time to fill in the blanks and make the whole movie feel as arresting as its early scenes. As is, it’s not a complete wash, but it’s hard to drum up a lot of enthusiasm for something that feels half-baked.
The more interesting thing that comes of this movie is its upending of our assumptions about teenage girls. Frivolity is nowhere to be found, and neither is objectification or dismissal.
Some films aspire to lofty messages, trying to say something deep and profound about our place in the world in an attempt to make us feel less alone. Others accomplish this by having a goat chase Lily James. Whatever works.
If ever a movie could be described as a warm hug, it’s David Lowery’s mind-bogglingly earnest Pete’s Dragon.
That’s the thing: Stargirl isn’t outright bad. The way Hart sets up shots and makes the whole thing churn along does give it a nostalgic feel that’ll remind you of the movies that were produced for you in childhood. It goes down easy, particularly if you put it on in the background while you take care of your adult chores. But if you want something that will capture your full attention without making you slightly uncomfortable, look elsewhere.
Emily Wheeler Movie Ops 