Post-Lassiter Engineering Pixar/Disney finally dumped John Lassiter over his profoundly offensive behaviour. As consumers, we still pay part of our ticket for his buyout, but get the benefit of the second story team, previously suppressed by his understanding of story mechanics. Some of these are great. I liked the risk in ‘Lightyear’. But the front… Continue reading Luca (2021)
Category: New Comments
Comments made since the IMBD era, for here
Confess, Fletch
Padre For some reason, the noir detective — and the companion trope of sky — is easy to turn comedic. One of the tried and true techniques is the Nick Charles model of coolness, plus joke lines intended directly for the viewer not the on-screen companion. I cannot recall the earlier versions with Chase, and… Continue reading Confess, Fletch
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
A Hidden Nation There seems no way to remark on this without anchoring it in what I believe is a new cinematic vocabulary. We all cheered when Gal Godot, in the first of that series, established a woman hero. But that character was spooky strange, literally born from a cartoonist’s sexual fetish, and designed on… Continue reading Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Storm Boy (1976)
Internal Weather I’ve had the advantage of being old, and living in both the US and Australia and raising kids in each. That gives me a perspective on the book before seeing the film. Every so often, a young adult book hits a sweet spot in the national heart. I believe it is because we… Continue reading Storm Boy (1976)
Appointment with Death (1988)
Multiple Appointments You can come to films for the bubble of the film, as it presents itself. Or you can enjoy the film as a character in your life, your personal film and the narratives that change you. In this case, I chose the larger film. That’s because I have an overarching narrative about Agatha… Continue reading Appointment with Death (1988)
Bodies, Bodies, Bodies (2022)
Hideous Sun Demon I am not the intended target audience for this. That seems to be the kind of young folks that go to slasher films and that also like folded narrative and explicit twists at the end. But I am an engaged viewer in any film that experiments with a self-referential layer, even if… Continue reading Bodies, Bodies, Bodies (2022)
Enola Holmes 2 (2022)
Confidence Games Three things to like in this. The first is the obvious breaking of the fourth wall. Rather than be sly like Bruce Willis often was, this is in your face old school in-action narration. It is refreshing. Not so sure it will still work in a third film, though. The second is simply… Continue reading Enola Holmes 2 (2022)
See How They Run (2022)
More Layers The film itself is lovely, after the style of Anderson but with softer edges and more welcome split screens. The use of the splits is cinematically reflective of the story. That’s the real star here, though most folks focus on the comedic cops. So, what we have is a movie about a movie… Continue reading See How They Run (2022)
The Great Wall (2016)
Jump! I am an admirer of this filmmaker, and he does better when he gets closer to a single soul or small collection of them. But for large projects he seems to be able to understand how to group extras and their CG equivalent for visual music. But here it seems that he got into… Continue reading The Great Wall (2016)
The Cutter
Patterned Don’t read until after seeing this. Very likely, the effectiveness of this comes from a few key people with deep experience in the stage, plus possibly one person with a sensitive philosophy of blocking. So if you talked to them, you’d get a bunch of very interesting, even fascinating tradecraft. But for me, that… Continue reading The Cutter