Archive For The “A Night At the Movies” Category
Read or watch most full-length novels and films and you’ll find what’s often called the B story or subplot. Sometimes more than one. If done well, subplots can add all kinds of crazy flavor to a tale, like a great appetizer or wine paired with an entree. Done poorly, they’re boring slogs that cause people…
Every time I start one of the Lego Movie films, I experience a sense of bewilderment that what I’m about to watch actually exists. Of all the various merchandise brands that could be movie series – I’m waiting for you, Nerf: The Movie – Lego is somehow gracing the big screen nearly once a year. They do it, like…
Fiction of any sort – be it a poem, a song, a movie or a book – requires its audience to be flexible. To silence the inevitable voices in their minds telling them that dragons do not exist, that magic is, well, just that. Space ships don’t shoot lasers, and one man armed with a single pistol…
One of the survival mechanisms of a long flight is watching as many movies as possible to the point where the hours you’re spending stuck in a chair, inhaling what amounts to the stale taco breath of a hundred other people, blur into a haze that ends as soon as possible. I tend to use…
Yes, yes, I know it’s a spy show. I know there’s guns, conspiracy, murder and more. Yet, somehow, I’ve stuck the words “family dynamics” up there in the title of this post where, presumably, it wouldn’t be without some reason. I shall, in the method of blogs, explain. Spy thrillers make a habit of…
We’ve seen so many of them – the fast-moving sequence where a character dashes, dodges, darts and dives through one stunt after another, with maybe a pinch of violence thrown in there to spice things up. It’s hard to find an original action sequence these days, and harder still to find one that helps build…
There are numerous reasons to like Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, but if I have to pick one, and given the standard size of these posts, I do – then it’s the full, dynamic characters the movie constructs. This goes beyond the titular Black Panther himself and Killmonger, the villain. Most stories are going to invest a…
You rarely see temperate desolation. It’s either scorching desert, or, as in Wind River‘s case, an expanse of Wyoming wilderness where, as Jeremy Renner’s wildlife ranger states, “It’s too cold to snow.” The movie, which is available on US Netflix now, is a taut, interesting thriller that uses a familiar combination of young, naive hero out…
I saw The Shape of Water recently and found it functioned like a beautifully rendered vision of someone’s dream. Someone who had either been reading a lot of Aquaman comics, or doing a fair amount of drugs while sitting in front of an aquarium. That’s the thing about movies: they are visions. Those of the director, the…
There’s a movie out now, The Post, that acts as a sort of prequel to the 1976 film All the President’s Men. Both of these concern The Washington Post and, in major and supporting roles (respectively), the newspaper’s editor at the time, Ben Bradlee. Played by Tom Hanks in the newer one and Jason Robards in the older (in…