We’re thrilled to be launching a fortnightly video companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch every second Monday, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel. And the video will typically be separate from the written content. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.
This week, we took a look at the debate over superheroes killing, which is a major thematic point in the recent blockbuster Black Adam. It’s an interesting point of discussion, but one that often overlooks and misses the larger trend within the superhero genre. That sort of debate doesn’t happen over other pulp heroes, like cowboys or gangsters or pirates, so what is it that makes superheroes a special case?
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. This week marks the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and so it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the movie’s complicated postcolonial politics.
Wakanda Forever is a movie fascinated by the consequences of colonialism. Wakanda is defined by the fact that it has never experienced colonialism or imperialism, and Wakanda Forever throws the nation state into conflict with Talokan, a nation with an entire history shaped and defined by colonial violence. This gets at one of the central tensions of Wakanda Forever, in that it is a movie fascinated by the violence commited by victims of colonialism, rather than the violence inflicted by colonial powers.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Deirdre Molumby and Graham Day, 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.
This week, we’re continuing a season focusing on the work of one particular director: Brad Bird’s The Incredibles.
Bob Parr was living an exciting life as the superhero Mr. Incredible, until a change in public opinion forced him to hang up his tights for good. Settling down to start a family with Helen, Bob still yearns for the adventure and excitement of his youth. Out of nowhere, a mysterious woman appears with an offer that seems too good to be true, drawing Bob back into a life that he never fully abandoned.
At time of recording, it was ranked 230th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever this weekend, it seemed as good an opportunity as any to look at what sets the film apart from so many modern superhero movies.
Wakanda Forever is a superhero movie with an absent centre, built around the loss of actor Chadwick Boseman. Writer and director Ryan Coogler leans into this, building a superhero movie that is essentially about the limits of exceptionalism and the understanding that sometimes excellence alone is not enough to prevail. In a genre that is shaped and defined by power fantasies, Wakanda Forever embraces and explores a form of powerlessness that is radical within the confines of the superhero narrative, and one that grants the movie a thoughtful resonance in light of the years since the original’s release.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
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 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which is releasing in cinemas this weekend.
I published a new piece at The Escapist yesterday. This week marks the premiere of The English, a co-production between the BBC and Amazon.
The English is effectively a spaghetti western with a very British sensibility. It is written and directed by Hugo Blick. It stars Emily Blunt, and its supporting cast is populated with British and Irish character actors like Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones, Rafe Spall and Stephen Rea. However, it is a thoughtful exploration of the genre, and an obvious love letter to the exploitation movies of the sixties and seventies. The show is occasionally a little to reverent to its inspirations, but it is beautifully shot and deeply moving, anchored in two great central performances from Chaske Spencer and Emily Blunt.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the recent launch of Netflix’s ad-supported tier, it seemed as good a time as any to take a look at the larger trends in contemporary streaming.
Streaming services have moved away from the binge model. They have become more transparent in their ratings. They have begun scheduling the release of particular episodes across various days of the week. They have even begun releasing some episodes in prime time. The plotting on these shows has become a lot more reminiscent of turn of the millennium zeitgeisty mystery box shows than early streaming stories. All of this is to suggest that the future of streaming seems to look a lot like old-fashioned television.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist last week. With Andor continuring to be very good, it seemed as good an opportunity as any to talk about the show’s unique aesthetic, and how that relates to the original Star Wars.
Andor manages to thread a very fine line. It takes the audience to places that were largely unseen in the original trilogy, from prison planets to remote highlands to sprawling urban centres. However, it does this in a way that manages to feel faithful to the aesthetic of the original films. It does this by embracing the culture and aesthetics of the era around those movies, embracing a version of the science-fiction world that feels very much in step with seventies cinema. The result is something that manages to feel both part of the larger Star Wars universe and also something new to it, while remaining very contemporary.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Deirdre Molumby and Graham Day, 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.
This week, we’re kicking off a season focusing on the work of one particular director: Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant.
Hogarth Hughes is a lonely kid coming of age in fifties Maine, when he comes across a very strange creature living in the local wilderness: a gigantic metal man who has crashed on this planet from another world. The two strike up a deep and abiding bond. However, Hogarth very quickly discovers that other forces are also trying to track down his new friend.
At time of recording, it was ranked 250th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
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 of the third season of Lower Decks, which is on Paramount Plus.
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