Movies
I won’t be coy. The genesis for this piece was the hypothesis that The Last Jedi was not “divisive,” despite that word being Welcome Tokenism: Embracing the Oscars’ Popular-Film Category
Like many people, I had an immediate negative reaction to the announcement last week of a new Achievement in Popular Film category for the Oscars. But as I thought about it, I grew to like the change and see it as a worthy and noble effort.
Best Picture Nominations: Two Modest Proposals for the Academy
The Academy Awards’ process for choosing its Best Picture nominees isn’t broken, but it could easily be better. A system that has room for Amour alongside Argo and Brooklyn next to Mad Max: Fury Road is doing something right, even when widely acknowledged stinkers also get nominated. But the Academy could enact two reforms – one simple, one more fraught – that would address some shortcomings.
Tagged: Academy Awards, Best Picture, Oscars, Wonder Woman
Battle of the Box-Office Blowhards
The Last Jedi is clearly an abysmal failure. Take it from Rob Cain, who on December 22 published an article on Forbes.com with the headline “Last Jedi Grosses Are Collapsing with the Worst Daily Holds of All Nine Star Wars Movies”. But Cain’s chosen lens has several flaws.
Save What You Love, and Let the Past Die
Writer/director Rian Johnson gives Star Wars fans just about everything they could want in The Last Jedi, assuming they didn’t require it to follow the story beats, narrative cleanliness, and relatively consistent tone of The Empire Strikes Back. That, of course, means that Johnson has given a large number of fans what they didn’t want.
The Enthusiast: On Roger Ebert
In 2010, at the age of 67, Roger Ebert reviewed The Human Centipede (First Sequence) – a horror flick that seems to exist primarily to make viewers vomit. As a professional movie critic for more than four decades, Ebert could have been forgiven for skipping it altogether. But he turned in a no-star-rating review that begins with an earnest rumination on the path to mortality: “It’s not death itself that’s so bad. It’s what you might have to go through to get there.”
Tagged: Critics, Death, Roger Ebert
BatChrist: Born (and Re-Born) in Hell
Depending on how you choose to count, there are either three or four Batman resurrections in The Dark Knight Rises.
The Audacity of Repetition, Reinforcement, and Clarity
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises is an incredibly ballsy movie. I don’t mean its scope and ambition, both of which are indeed impressive. I mean the audacity of choices that could have easily backfired: following Heath Ledger’s nuanced, razor-sharp Joker with the nearly blank thug Bane; recycling Batman Begins’ sinister plot, doomsday machine, and League of Shadows; inserting teenage-boy masturbation fantasy Catwoman into a universe largely devoid of sex appeal and camp (and non-Rachel Dawes women, period); crafting a lengthy, convoluted first act made even less comprehensible because of the sound design and score; and relegating Batman to captivity of one sort or another for the vast majority of the movie’s first 115 minutes.
Needed Scars for a Better Dark Knight
How about a magic trick? I shall transform Christopher Nolan’s 144-minute The Dark Knight into a significantly better movie by trimming eight minutes from it.
Tagged: Batman, Christopher Nolan, Reviews, Superheroes, The Dark Knight
Gross Error
How is The Human Centipede (First Sequence) not among the most transgressive and repulsive movies ever made? For those not familiar with the premise of writer/director Tom Six’s feature, there’s no reason to be coy about it. The Internet Movie Database plot summary of The Human Centipede reads: “A mad scientist kidnaps and mutilates a trio of tourists in order to ‘reassemble’ them into a new ‘pet’ – a human centipede, created by stitching their mouths to each others’ rectums.”
