Darren

New Podcast! The Escapist Movie Podcast – “The Only Thing Horrifying About New Mutants is How Bad It Is”

Posted on November 22, 2020 by Darren

The Escapist have launched a movie podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard and Maggie Iken for the twelfth episode. Adaptation is a recurring motif that bridges the four sections of the podcast, covering the news about Wonder Woman 1984 heading to streaming, the development of the Uncharted adaptation, plans to adapt The Guilty for Netflix and a discussion of New Mutants.

You can listen to the episode here, back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.

Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: new mutants, the guilty, uncharted, wonder woman 1984 | Leave a comment »

209. Shutter Island – Summer of Scorsese (#156)

Posted on November 21, 2020 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Jay Coyle and Darren Mooney, with special guest Kurt North, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, continuing our Summer of Scorsese season, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island.

Martin Scorsese is one of the defining directors in American cinema, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that have shaped and defined cinema across generations: Who’s That Knocking at My Door?, Boxcar Bertha, Cape Fear, Casino, The Aviator, The Departed, Silence. The Summer of Scorsese season offers a trip through his filmography via the IMDb‘s 250.

Federal Marshall Teddy Daniels makes a trip across Boston Harbour to visit the psychiatric institution on Shutter Island, investigating the mysterious disappearance of one of the patients. However, as Teddy probes deeper and deeper into the workings of the facility, it becomes very clear that things are not as they appear.

At time of recording, it was ranked 156th on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: b-movie, ben kingsley, boston, conspiracy theories, dream, Inception, insanity, jason coyle, jay coyle, kurt north, Leonardo diCaprio, madness, mark ruffalo, martin scorsese, Movie, nightmare, nostalgia, reality, Shutter Island, the holocaust | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On James McAvoy’s Complex and Compelling Charles Xavier…

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With New Mutants releasing on streaming this week, effectively drawing the shutters down on Fox’s “X-Men Cinematic Universe”, it seemed an appropriate time to take a look back at one of the franchise’s unsung highlights: its portrayal of Charles Xavier.

Charles Xavier is a challenging character. He was essentially introduced as a plot function, the adult in the room for a teenage superhero team. However, over the years, Xavier has come to embody more. However, he has typically been portrayed as a saint or an icon. As played by James McAvoy, Xavier becomes a much more complex and compelling character, one who raises important questions about the X-Men as a metaphor for minority groups and about the best way of advancing ideas like social change and equality.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: america, charles xavier, colour-blind, Fox, in the frame, james mcavoy, new mutants, post-racial, race, respectability politics, x-men | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “Mank – Review in 3 Minutes”

Posted on November 19, 2020 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching 3-Minute Reviews on Escapist Movies. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute the first three-minute feature film review to the channel, discussing David Fincher’s Mank.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: david fincher, gary oldman, mank, the escapist, three minute review, three minute reviews | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special

Posted on November 17, 2020 by Darren

“The past is the best present,” promised the trailer to The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special. That seems to be the special’s statement of intent.

The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special is the latest example of Disney’s efforts at brand consolidation within the Star Wars franchise, arriving just as the second season of The Mandalorian has begun folding characters from animated series like The Clone Wars and Rebels into live action continuity. The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special is not so much about bringing another marketed part of Star Wars history into the larger tapestry of the Star Wars franchise. Instead, it is effectively about replacing The Star Wars Holiday Special, the famously terrible special from 1978.

“Life Day comes around so fast…”

The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special seems designed to effectively neutralise a lot of the stench of The Star Wars Holiday Special by repurposing the core concept and idea in a manner that is easier to package and distribute without potentially harming the overall brand. It largely works. The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special is a much better production than the earlier iteration. Crucially for Disney, it is also much less embarrassing. The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special is an iteration of that foundational Star Wars text that can stream on Disney+ without harming the brand.

That is perhaps the best thing that can be said about The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special. It is a perfectly serviceable piece of Star Wars content.

The hole issue with modern Star Wars.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: disney, film, Lego, Movie, non-review review, review, star wars, star wars holiday special, the lego star wars holiday special, the star wars holiday special | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On “GoldenEye” and an Unchanged Bond in a Changed World…

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Darren

So, as I have mentioned before, I am launching a new video series as a companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch with the Monday article, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel the following week. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film channel – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.

With that in mind, here is last week’s episode. To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of GoldenEye, we took a look back at the first James Bond film of the nineties, which introduced the suave secret agent to a whole new generation. Indeed, the genius of the film lay in its understanding of Bond. It presented a version of Bond that had no changed, even as the world around him had.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: bond, Cold War, GoldenEye, in the frame, james bond, pierce brosnan, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Return of the Jedi” Reduced “Star Wars” to Formula…

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special releasing tomorrow, I thought it was worth taking a look back at Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi.

In particular, the way in which Return of the Jedi sets an outer limit on what Star Wars can be. After the previous film in the series pushed the franchise outwards, the third film in the original trilogy folds the series back in on itself and sets a clear boundary on what Star Wars is and what Star Wars will forever be. It is a creative choice that has arguably hindered the franchise in the years since, restricting its capacity to push beyond that template and embrace new ideas and new concepts.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, george lucas, in the frame, Luke Skywalker, return of the jedi, star wars, the escapist, video | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Escapist Movie Podcast – “25 Years After Toy Story, We’re Still In Love With Pixar”

Posted on November 14, 2020 by Darren

The Escapist have launched a movie podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard and KC Nwosu for the twelfth episode. We marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of Toy Story by looking at what makes Pixar unique, we reflected on news that Paramount are planning to expand A Quiet Place into a franchise, and we examined the opening three episodes of The Mandalorian.

You can listen to the episode here, back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.

Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: a quiet place, jack packard, jeff nichols, kc nwosu, star wars, the mandalorian, toy story, woody | Leave a comment »

208. The Departed – Summer of Scorsese (#44)

Posted on November 14, 2020 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Jay Coyle and Darren Mooney, with special guest Aoife Martin, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, continuing our Summer of Scorsese season, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.

Martin Scorsese is one of the defining directors in American cinema, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that have shaped and defined cinema across generations: Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ, Age of Innocence, Kundun, The Aviator, Shutter Island, Hugo. The Summer of Scorsese season offers a trip through his filmography via the IMDb‘s 250.

Boston gangster Frank Costello believes that boundaries are fungible: sinner/saint, hero/villain, cop/criminal. Sending one of his young followers to infiltrate the local police department, Costello quickly discovers that something similar is happening to him. As the stakes escalate, the boundaries between policemen and gangsters blur, as Colin Sullivan and Billy Costigan straddle the gulf.

At time of recording, it was ranked 44th on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.