the m0vie blog

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 HBO Max and the Future of Disappearing Media…

Posted on December 26, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist last week. With the recent chaos at HBO Max and the removal of content from the service, it seemed like a good time to discuss of film and television have suddenly become ephemeral again.

One of the big selling points of the streaming age was that everything would be immediately available to audience members at the click of a mouse; vast libraries of content would be made available to stream via these services, representing a boon for conservationists and archivists everywhere. Nothing would be lost, because everything would be at hand. However, the removal of entire shows from HBO Max illustrates that these projects are as intangible as they have ever been, and that they can removed and even destroyed without any warning whatsoever.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: access, archiving, availability, HBO Max, history, lost destroyed, preservation, record, streaming, Television, westworld, wiped | Leave a comment »

318. The Life of Brian – Christmas 2022 (#245)

Posted on December 24, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this week joined by special guest Richard Newby, 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 second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This time, a Christmas treat, Terry Jones’ Life of Brian.

Brian Cohen is a young Jewish man living in Jerusalum at the same time as Jesus Christ. Desperate to impress a girl and reeling from revelations about his heritage, Brian commits to join a local revolutionary paramilitary to resist Roman rule. However, nothing is quite as simple as it may initially seem, and Brian finds himself swept up in a messianic fervour well beyond his control.

At time of recording, it was ranked 245th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: belief, comedy, controversy, Eric Idle, graham chapman, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Cleese, Michael Palin, monty python, religion, space, te life of brian, terry gilliam, terry jones, The 250 | 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 How “Willow” Got Lost in the Wildwood…

Posted on December 22, 2022 by Darren

I am doing weekly reviews of Willow at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Wednesday evening while the show is on, looking at the legacy sequel as it progresses from one episode to the next.

With Willow officially past the midpoint of its first season, the show hits a sizable bump in the road. Wildwood is the first episode of the show that feels purely functional rather than narratively engaging on its own terms. It’s a very mechanical piece of television, with the plot grinding to a halt so the series can run down a checklist of character and plot beats that it needs to articulate for the audience before moving any further. It does a lot of necessary place-setting, but stalls the season and the show around it.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: escapist, exposition, Narrative, show, stakes, streaming, structure, the escapist, wildwood, willow | 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.