Illuminated There’s been a decision made to not tune the CGI very much, I guess in the assumption that it won’t matter. The emphasis instead is on a lot of story in many episodic clusters, plus what passes for human interest in this demographic. There is some clever use of recalled Batman actors. A completely… Continue reading The Flash (2023)
Tag: 2020s
Films released in the 2020s
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Winning I shudder with the knowledge that in a few days, this grossed higher than any Pixar movie. Imagineer that. This about as charmless as it gets without the floor falling off, so I can only attribute the success to love of the character. As a non-gamer, I have no window into what this entails,… Continue reading The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Tenet (2020)
Reflective Narrative You can draw a chart of what goes on in Nolan’s mind and how that instances in the worlds of cinema and the one I share. That chart would then be superimposed on a chart of timelines and events in this film. Nolan’s chart would trace an obsession with narrative reinterpretation plus cinematic… Continue reading Tenet (2020)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
Inside the Lines In most respects, this is a conventional film. It has a lot of story, more than one dynamic development, and character portrayals way beyond the normal. Its conventionalism is also reflected in the father dynamic, pervasive these days, the social message of antiracism, and the standard final monster battle. A few jokes.… Continue reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
Oppenheimer (2023)
Fours First let me remark on the film itself. Visually, Nolan continues his ‘dogma of performance’ where every decision is slanted toward reality except — predictably — the sex scenes. Structurally, he has mapped his philosophy of folded narrative onto basically four events with nested histories, both as traditional viewer-oriented (narrative-expository) flashbacks, and those carried… Continue reading Oppenheimer (2023)
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (2022)
Ensnared The affirmative platitudes that anchor this are inescapable, and since they are relatively true, you may as well embrace them. My tween boys did, and I’m glad for it. But why I am recommending this is the art and animation. I have to admit that I do not know the legacy. For all I… Continue reading The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (2022)
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
Broken Cosmologies These come to me already broken. For me to enter the world of a film, I have to have some understanding of the world. But over many decades the origins have been confusing. Each movie tosses the cosmology of the previous one and substitutes some device or thing that was more important than… Continue reading Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
No Bears (2022)
Religions All religion is about sex, all tribalisms about religion, and all film about tribalism. This is the form of how I approach things these days, with three layers of introspective epiphany, and a token from the film for each layer. In this case, I thought to share it as a self-referential film comment, meaning… Continue reading No Bears (2022)
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)
Self with Shoes On As I understand it, this was concieved in the breakup of a marriage. The voice and most of the script is by the disappointed wife, and the surrounding framing by the presumably inadequate husband. The actual events had some videos posted to YouTube, leading to enough fame to carry the film.… Continue reading Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
Chapter and Verse Lest I sound overly critical below, let me say up front that this is an important film if only because it extends the vocabulary. I’m excited by it and what we may expect. However, I recently commented on ‘Fast X’ and noted that these sorts of films have three relatively independent components:… Continue reading Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)