the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “Avatar: The Way of Water” as the Rare Discourse-Free Blockbuster…

Posted on January 30, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With Avatar: The Way of Water continuing to push its way up the list of highest-grossing movies of all-time, it is interesting that James Cameron’s sequel hasn’t dominated the discourse to the same extent as comparable blockbusters like Avengers: Infinity War or Avengers: Endgame.

Truth be told, there is something innately charming about that. It’s fun to have a big and bombastic blockbuster that hasn’t become an online shouting match, a film that audiences have just turned out to see and then gone back to their lives without making the film’s performance or reception a key part of their identity. Whatever problems there may be with The Way of Water, there is something to be said for a film that manages to entertain that many people without causing too many ripples.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: avatar: the way of water, box office, culture, debate, discourse, in the frame, pop culture, social media, the escapist, whales | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Poker Face” as a Show About Empathy and Action…

Posted on January 29, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist during the week. With the recent release of the first four episodes of Poker Face on Peacock, it seemed like a good opportunity to discuss the show’s central thematic and narrative preoccupations: the importance of both empathy and action in response to injustice.

Poker Face exists as part of Rian Johnson’s filmography, and is an obvious companion piece to Knives Out and Glass Onion. However, it fits alongside those stories in more than just its genre. Johnson is a filmmaker fascinated by the power of empathy, and the importance of understanding other human beings on a personal level. Poker Face is the story of a character so good at listening that she can instinctively spot a lie. However, in this world, empathy is not enough of itself. Poker Face is a show about the need for action in support of empathy.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: action, empathy, glass onion, knives out, phones, poker face, Rian Johnson, social media, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Poker Face” as an Argument for Episodic Television…

Posted on January 28, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist during the week. With the recent release of the first four episodes of Poker Face on Peacock, it seemed like a good opportunity to consider the show as a rare example of high-profile and prestigious episodic television.

For decades, episodic storytelling was the default model for American television. Around the millennium, mainstream shows started to shift toward serialisation, a trend accelerated by the arrival of streaming. Most modern prestige shows are heavily serialised, effectively telling a single narrative over the course of an entire season. Poker Face rejects this structure, embracing a “case of the week” format. However, the show is more than just an example of the potential of episodic storytelling. It’s very much an affirmative case for it.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: adventure, arcs, curiosity, exploration, natasha lyonne, poker face, serialisation, storytelling, Television, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On What Kevin Feige Doesn’t Get About “Superhero Fatigue”…

Posted on January 27, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. Last week, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige made an argument that he could never understand the idea of “superhero fatigue”, referencing the diversity of genres and stories in superhero comics.

Feige’s response was interesting for a number of reasons. Most obviously, it was technically correct. Comic books are incredibly flexible in the kind of stories they tell and the way that they tell them. However, Feige’s answer sidestepped the obvious problem. In recent years, the superhero movie has grown more conservative and more conventional, becoming less likely to embrace different tones and styles, or to tell different kinds of stories. In the past fifteen years, the entire comic book adaptation genre has been flattened down to “Marvel movies”, and that is a very real problem.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: comic book movies, in the frame, kevin feige, marvel, Marvel Studios, superhero fatigue, superheroes, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Poker Face” as Must-See Mystery Television…

Posted on January 26, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this week. With the release of Poker Face on Peacock this week, I got to review the first six episodes of the show.

From director Rian Johnson and actor Natasha Lyonne, Poker Face is a love letter to seventies television. It’s obviously indebted to shows like Columbo or The Rockford Files, but it owes just as much to classic wandering hero narratives like Kung Fu and The Incredible Hulk. It’s a glorious and thrilling piece of television, that is both a love letter and an update to the medium’s rich history.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: america, columbo, history, natasha lyonne, poker face, Rian Johnson, Television, the rockford files | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “TÁR” as a Gothic Ghost Story About Cancel Culture…

Posted on January 25, 2023 by Darren

We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every second Wednesday, and the plan is to use it to look at some film and television that would maybe fall outside the remit of In the Frame, more marginal titles or objects of cult interest. This week, we took a look at Todd Field’s TÁR.

TÁR is an interesting film, and one that embraces an unsettling ambiguity in its exploration of its subject, classical conductor Lydia Tár. Field constructs a fascinating study of a woman literally and metaphorically haunted by the sins of her past, a movie that is very modern in its language but classical in its themes and tones. Tár is a gothic horror story for the digital age, a ghost story about cancel culture, and a nightmare about how conscience is often just the voices of the past refusing to be silenced.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: accountability culture, ambiguity, cancel culture, compassion, Darkness, empathy, ghosts, gothic horror, Guilt, haunted, listen, out of focus, Shame, tár, todd field | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “The Last of Us” Establishes the Rules of the Game…

Posted on January 24, 2023 by Darren

I am doing weekly reviews of The Last of Us at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Sunday evening while the show is on, looking at the video game adaptation as the show progresses. This week, the show’s second episode.

The Last of Us is an interesting piece of adaptation. It comes with a weight of expectation. There’s a sense in which the show needs to proves its adaptational bona fides to fans, by proving that it can faithfully adapt both the world and the internal logic of the source material. So the show’s second episode is an interesting fusion, a clear attempt to directly translate the experience of playing the source video game to a television series.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, horror, infected, logic, story, the escapist, the last of us, Video game | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Scream” Went From a Deconstruction to a Celebration of Horror Tropes…

Posted on January 23, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of Scream VI, it seemed like as good a time as any to consider the state of the modern horror franchise.

When Scream premiered, it was a radical deconstruction of classic slasher movie tropes that breathed new life into the genre. It even helped to resurrect troubled slasher franchises like Halloween or Child’s Play. So it’s interesting that, as the series has progressed, it has become more and more like the kinds of movies that it was originally a reaction against. It’s a fascinating illustration of how these franchises evolve over the decades since their original release.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: deconstruction, franchise, horror, in the frame, Movie, Scream, scream 6, slasher, trailer | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Recursive Nostalgia of “That ’90s Show”…

Posted on January 22, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist yesterday. With the recent release of That ’90s Show on streaming, it seemed like a good opportunity to delve into the show’s very interesting nostalgia.

Part of what is so fascinating about That ’90s Show is that layers of nostalgia that permeate it. It is not simply a show nostalgic for the nineties. It is a show that is itself nostalgic for the nostalgia of the nineties. It’s a conscious effort to resurrect the multi-camera sitcom, a classic institution of American television that has become something of a cultural artifact. It’s also a show that is less interested in its own nineties setting than it is in indirectly channelling the nostalgia that that show felt for the seventies. It’s a hall of mirrors.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: netflix, nineties, nostalgia, resurrection, revival, Sitcom, that '90s show | Leave a comment »

321. The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (-#92)

Posted on January 21, 2023 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest David Monaghan, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

So this week, Brian Levant’s The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.

Years before they become the family that audiences know and love, Fred and Wilma are living very different lives. Fred is a quarry working, looking for connection. Wilma is the daughter of a wealthy family, looking to experience something real. Fate (and a meddling alien named Gazoo) conspires to throw the two into one another’s lives. However, Fred soon discovers that he has a potential romantic rival in the spiteful Chip Rockefeller, who invites the couple on a trip that they’ll never forget to Rock Vegas.

At time of recording, it was ranked 92nd on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.