I’m thrilled to be launching movie 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 three-minute review of No Time to Die, which is in British and Irish theatres now, but will be released in America next week.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 3mr, escapist, no time to die, the escapist, three minute review | Leave a comment »
There is perhaps some irony in the fact that a movie titled No Time to Die is the longest movie in the James Bond franchise.
No Time to Die is an interesting mess of a movie. It’s a film that contains a variety of interesting and intriguing elements that never coalesce into something completely satisfying, and are often lost in a mess of continuity accrued from the previous four entries in the franchise. As the final film in the franchise to star Daniel Craig, No Time to Die finds itself tasked with turning off the lights at the end of the night, serving as something of a series finale to the actor’s previous adventures.
Drinking it all in.
The biggest challenge facing No Time to Die is the simple fact that the previous four films in the franchise don’t really form a single or cohesive narrative. They were four separate movies, with each shaped and informed by the reaction to the prior entry. When Casino Royale proved that audiences could accept a modern take on the James Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace doubled down on tweaking the character to fit into the modern action thriller landscape. When that didn’t work, Skyfall course-corrected for a more traditional approach. Following that success, SPECTRE tried clumsily to tie it all together.
No Time to Die spends far too much of its impressive runtime trying to reconcile these films to each other. As a result, the film never really finds space to play with its own more interesting and compelling ideas.
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: bond, daniel craig, film, james bond, Movie, no time to die, non-review review, review | 1 Comment »
With a slew of Marvel Studios productions coming to Disney+ over the next six months, The Escapist has launched a weekly show discussing these series
This week, I join KC Nwosu and Amy Campbell to talk about the sixth and seventh episodes of What If…?, streaming on Disney+.
Filed under: Podcasts!, Television | Tagged: a marvellous escape, a marvelous escapse, Black Panther, captain marvel, continuity, iron man, killmonger, marvel, mcu, thor, what if | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the pending release of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at Venom.
Venom is not a good movie. It is a mess of a movie. It is chaotic, random, unstructured, nonsensical. However, it is interesting. What is particularly interesting about Venom is the way in which it feels like something of a throwback to an era of a different kind of superhero movie. Venom recalls the superhero movies from the turn-of-the-millennium, films that played faster and looser with their established characters without worrying about fidelity or faithfulness. There’s something interesting in looking at Venom as a superhero movie out of time.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: comic books, Eddie Brock, enimem, films, in the frame, superhero movies, the escapist, tom hardy, venom | Leave a comment »
I published a new column at The Escapist yesterday. With the seismic news that Russell T. Davies would be returning as showrunner of Doctor Who, it seemed worth taking a look at what he might bring.
Davies is, to put it simply, one of the best dramatists working on British television. He is also one of the single most important creative personnel in the history of Doctor Who. While Barry Letts did briefly return as an executive producer, his return is unprecedented. While nobody knows exactly what happened behind the scenes, it seems safe to suggest that his return is a pretty big deal. So the question remains: can Davies save Doctor Who again?
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: Chris Chibnall, doctor who, russell t. davies, the escapist | Leave a comment »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Billie Jean Doheny and Niall Glynn, 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, Pitof’s Catwoman.
Patience Phillips is a young woman working as a designer at a cosmetics company. One evening, while working late, Patience hears something she shouldn’t. Hunted by her employer’s security staff, Patience is left for dead and washed away like the trash. However, her would-be murderers are about to discover that Patience has never been more alive.
At time of recording, it was ranked 49th on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: action, billie jean doheny, catwoman, cosmetics, feminine superheroes, feminism, film naught, Halle Berry, niall glynn, pitof, superheroes, women | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of the first two episodes of Foundation on Apple TV+, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at Isaac Asimov’s hugely influential science-fiction series.
Foundation casts a long shadow over American science-fiction, its influence felt on projects like Star Wars and Star Trek. However, while it has been adapted as a radio play, the new television show marks the first successful effort to bring the show to screen. What is it that makes Foundation so difficult to adapt? Why has it taken so long for such a foundational text to come to film or television? How is a science-fiction saga that began in the late forties and carried on into the fifties still relevant today?
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: apple tv, escapist, foundation, in the frame, jared harris, science fiction, the escapist | Leave a comment »
I am always thrilled to get a chance to talk about Star Trek with other fans, so I was thrilled at the invitation to join the wonderful Aaron Coker on Enterprising Individuals to talk about That Which Survives.
The third season of Star Trek is an interesting season of television. It is largely dismissed and overlooked by many fans, who write it off as a season in clear decline. Certainly, the season contains no shortage of terrible episodes: And the Children Shall Lead, The Way to Eden, The Paradise Syndrome, Turnabout Intruder and many more. However, there’s an interesting atmosphere that pervades the season, the sense that the third season of Star Trek is drifting through a haunted and dead universe. That Which Survives is a pure example of this, like The Tholian Web or Spectre of the Gun or All Our Yesterdays.
You can listen to the episode here, back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.
Filed under: Podcasts!, The Original Series | Tagged: aaron coker, D. C. Fontana, death, decay, enterprise, enterprising individuals, fred freiberger, ghosts, haunting, kirk, podcast, sirens, star trek, wrong | 2 Comments »
I’m thrilled to be launching movie 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 three-minute full-season review of Star Wars: Visions, which is streaming on Disney+ right now.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: 3mr, escapist, escapist magazine, star wars, star wars: visions, the escapist, three minute review, visions | Leave a comment »
I published a new column at The Escapist today. With the news that Christopher Nolan will be making his next movie at Universal, there was some extreme internet reaction to the deal that Nolan signed.
The overblown and performative online outrage is interesting, and says a lot about the internet’s strange obsession with Christopher Nolan as the only director who really gets to make personal projects at this level. Indeed, the most interesting thing about the internet outrage was how ill-informed it was. Nolan’s terms aren’t especially unusual in the world of directors working at that level. Nolan’s deal is similar to those struck with directors like Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino or even Tyler Perry. It is business as usual.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: Christopher Nolan, deals, directors, films, hollywood, Movies, universal pictures | Leave a comment »
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