Movies | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “M3GAN”, “Renfield”, “Cocaine Bear”, “Knock at the Cabin” and the Enduring Appeal of Universal Horror…

Posted on January 9, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. This week, with the release of M3GAN, Renfield, Cocaine Bear and Knock at the Cabin all in the first four months of the year, it seemed like as good a time as any to consider Universal’s embrace of the horror movie and creature feature.

For the next couple of months, Avatar: The Way of Water is just going to dominate the box office. It will be unchallenged until the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in mid-February. However, what’s interesting is that other studios aren’t necessarily hiding from this. In fact, they’re releasing smaller and lower-budget movies in the space, in the hopes that they can quietly earn back relatively impresive box office on a low investment. In particular, Universal is returning to one of the studio’s most reliable models: the low-budget horror movie and creature feature.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: blockbusters, cocaine bear, creature features, dracula, knock at the cabin, m3gan, monster movies, Renfield, universal, universal pictures | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On 2022 as the Return of Spectacle…

Posted on January 1, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. With the year wrapping up, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the year in cinema. In particular, one of the big unifying trends in the year’s blockbusters, which balanced a celebration and a fear of spectacle.

This was the year that “movies were back.” Many of the year’s biggest blockbusters were celebrations of blockbuster cinema in its purest form, from the IMAX cinematography of Top Gun: Maverick to the immersive 3D of Avatar: The Way of Water to the breakout international success of RRR. However, there was also an anxiety about the power of spectacle and the toll that it takes, whether on its audience or on its subject. This played out in movies like Nope or Elvis. There was also a clear worry that this might be the end of it all, playing out in movies like Babylon or even Blonde.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: avatar: the way of water, babylon, blockbuster, blonde, elvis, escapist, Movies, nope, rrr, spectacle, the escapist, top gun: maverick | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “White Noise” and the Human Death Drive…

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of White Noise on Netflix, it seemed like a good opportunity to discuss Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s classic postmodern novel.

White Noise has long been considered unadaptable. However, Baumbach zeroes on a consistent throwline that guids his weird and eccentric adaptation through its various shifts and turns. White Noise is fundamentally a story about death. It is about the way in which so much culture – sex, media, consumerism – is designed as an effort to drown out the encroaching and inescapable sense of mortality. Baumbach presents a broad and cartoonish exploration of man’s inability to grapple with that universal certainty. In doing so, he tells a strangely moving story.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: adaptation, awards, column, consumerism, death, don delillo, in the frame, netflix, Noah Baumbach, Oscars, sex, white noise | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Eternals” as an Anti-Superhero Epic…

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this week. Because it’s that gap between Christmas and New Year, there’s been a bit of editorial leeway. And so, I got to write a little bit about Eternals, one of the more interesting and complicated recent Marvel Studios blockbusters.

Eternals doesn’t quite work. It’s important to acknowledge that upfront. However, the movie is interesting because of how it engages with superheroes. Eternals is not so much a superhero movie as it is a movie about superheroes. It’s about these stories that dominate the popular consciousness, this web of corporate-controlled mythology in which so much modern culture is tangled. It asks what the function of these characters and these stories should be.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: characters, chloé zhao, Eternals, evolution, growth, marvel, Marvel Studios, mcu, mythology, status quo, superheroes, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Babylon” As the Evil Twin of “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”…

Posted on December 27, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist earlier this week. With the release of Babylon over Christmas, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at Damien Chazelle’s latest feature film.

Babylon is a movie that obviously exists in the context of great Hollywood movies about Hollywood. In particular, Chazelle draws overtly and heavily from Singin’ in the Rain in this parable about Hollywood’s migration from silent films to talkies. However, Chazelle does something interesting, stripping out a lot of the romance of these narratives in favour of something approaching brutal honesty. Chazelle rejects a lot of the romantic nostalgia of these sorts of films, instead offering a much grittier take. At times Babylon feels like the coke-addled evil twin of something like Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: damien chazelle, escapist, hollywood, hollywood history, in the frame, Movie, once upon a time in hollywood, singin' in the rain, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the DCEU and the Chasing of the Shared Universe…

Posted on December 25, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist last weekend. Since James Gunn and Peter Safran have taken over the running of the DCEU, they have made a number of dramatic cuts and decisions, including the reporting scrapping of the company’s Wonder Woman and Aquaman franchises. There is some suggestion that the entire primary cast of the shared universe is gone, and that the team is starting over to rebuild a new shared universe from scratch.

It is a bold decision, and one that sidesteps a fairly obvious question: why are DC so excited for a shared universe? After all, it was the company’s over-enthusiastic pursuit of that ideal that left their continuity feeling like a mess in the first place. For all the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, shared universes are not easy to build, and DC has enjoyed a surprising amount of success with standalone projects like The Batman and Joker. Why is the company throwing everything away to try a strategy that already failed for them, and is showing signs of wearing off for their main competitor?

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: comic books, continuity, dceu, James Gunn, share duniverse, shared universe, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Glass Onion” Disrupts the Disruptors…

Posted on December 23, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Glass Onion on Netflix, it seemed like a good opportunity to look at Rian Johnson’s latest murder mystery.

There is a sly and self-aware gag buried at the heart of Glass Onion, one of the two Knives Out sequels that Netflix paid almost half-a-billion dollars for. Johnson’s latest film is a satire of tech disruptors, focusing on fictional visionary Miles Bron and his company Alpha. However, the movie’s social satire has a particularly pointed edge. Johnson is parodying precisely the sort of reckless tech disruptors that upended the cinematic landscape. In its own weird way, Netflix is perhaps the villain of Glass Onion.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: benoit blanc, commentary, disruption, edward norton, glass onion, in the frame, netflix, Rian Johnson, tech disruption | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Last Jedi” as a Movie About Optimism in a Cynical Time…

Posted on December 21, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist over the weekend. Given that Star Wars: The Last Jedi just turned five years old, it seemed like a good opportunity to reflect on one of the most ambitious franchise films of the twenty-first century.

In the years since its release, a certain narrative has settled around The Last Jedi, arguing that the film is a subversion or deconstruction of the larger franchise. However, this seems unfair. At its core, The Last Jedi is a fundamentally optimistic movie, a celebration of the importance of standing against tyranny and a rejection of moral relativism in the face of oppression. It is an unabashedly earnest and sincere movie that believes that some things are worth fighting for, even when the situation seems grim and odds are stacked in opposition. It is an unapologetic love letter to the romance of Star Wars.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: 2017, america, baby boomers, belief, faith, fate, galaxy, generation, hope, optimism, Rian Johnson, romance, star wars, star wars: the last jedi, the last jedi, trump | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “Avatar: The Way of Water is Visually Stunning, Narratively Fine”

Posted on December 20, 2022 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie and television reviews on The Escapist. 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 a five-minute film review Avatar: The Way of Water, which was released in cinemas this weekend.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: avatar: the way of water, escapist, jake sully, james cameron, neytiri, review, the escapist, the way of water, titanic, water | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! “Avatar: The Way of Water” and the Failed 3D Revolution…

Posted on December 19, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Avatar: The Way of Water, which is being rightly praised for its use of 3D, it seemed like a good opportunity to discuss the failed 3D revolution sparked (in part) by the original Avatar.

The standard narrative is that 3D was never going to work as a format, and that its death was inevitable. However, there were quite a few successful and well-received 3D movies released around the time of the original Avatar: Coraline, Gravity, The Adventures of Tintin, Hugo, The Life of Pi, The Great Gatsby, Holes. These were all movies with directors willing to play with the format in fun and creative ways, that leaned into the technical possibilities. The problem that arose was similar to a wider problem in the industry at that time, the rejection of filmmaking at that scale as a craft that relied on strong creative vision.

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