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)
Tag: 2020s
Films made in the 2020s
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 Outfit (2022)
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 Outfit (2022)
Paws of Fury The Legend of Hank (2022)
Cat Play Viewer paradigms are evolving quickly in the film world. I think the COVID lull has stopped that temporarily as we wash out the projects like this that were on automatic pilot during that era. By evolving, I mean that we as viewers build more and more devices for self-awareness in the film narrative.… Continue reading Paws of Fury The Legend of Hank (2022)
Bullet Train (2022)
Stations I admit to thinking the Deadpool experiments are offensive. They have introspection of the kind I study, but it is one-dimensional and the humour doesn’t justify the sacrifice of self-aware sophistication. But this folds in the best parts of ‘Pulp Fiction’, and I find it superior in many ways. I find Tarantino’s literal quotes… Continue reading Bullet Train (2022)
Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
Ancient Chase DNA What I find curious is how franchises become more ordinary over time. This is far from an original observation in terms of world construction and story. It makes sense to reuse these, because that defines the franchise. So we get the same basic world, same bad guys and situations (here amplified a… Continue reading Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
The Game I’ve enjoyed the series in spite of itself. When it started, it had three things going for it: a general stylishness, some original fight choreography, and a novel world’s cosmology. The first two have since been bested, including films with Keanu. We still have the cosmology, the world. That’s what you build your… Continue reading The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Une dernière fois (2020)
Dry This is a very promising idea. Take a 69 year old actress who was a star from the golden age of porn, someone who has maintained over the years a position of dignity in self-governed sexual expression. Posit the situation that this woman is for some reason alone, without sex for some time, and… Continue reading Une dernière fois (2020)