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 film review of Space Jam: A New Legacy, which is releasing theatrically and on HBO Max this weekend.
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: a new legacy, HBO Max, review, space jam, space jam: a new legacy, the escapist | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With Loki wrapping up its first season this week, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the show. In particular, how the season finale betrayed the show’s core themes and characters.
Loki is a story about many things, but it is primarily about power. It is about whether individuals have the power to determine the paths of their own lives. It is about who has the power to determine what stories get told and what they do with that power. It is also about how power intrinsically acts in its own best interests. There’s a lot of really interesting and biting stuff in Loki, which makes it slightly frustrating when the final makes a conscious choice to rob its characters of their agency, to reveal that this story doesn’t belong to them, and to argue that power must be centralised. In the end, Loki betrayed itself.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: escapist, escapist magazine, in the frame, loki, marvel, Marvel Studios, mcu, power | Leave a comment »
If Fear Street Part One – 1994 and Fear Street Part Two – 1978 didn’t make it clear enough, Fear Street Part Three – 1666 confirms that the trilogy is more of a miniseries than a set of films.
To be fair, this was quite clear from the outset. The films feature a large branching cast, with many actors carrying over from one installment to another. The continuity between the individual films is so tight that the two later installments each open with an extended “previously on…” segment. Fear Street Part Three – 1666 carries this idea to its logical conclusion, effectively functioning as a two-part season finale. It opens with an hour set in the past and then jumps forward for a forty-minute coda designed to close the book (if not literally) on the events from Fear Street Part One – 1994.
A sight for sore (or missing) eyes…
There’s not necessarily anything wrong with this. After all, there’s arguably not a huge difference between the structure of these three films and something like the Red Riding trilogy. More to the point, it demonstrates how porous the gap between various media has become. Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, the highest grossing movie of 2020, is really just a six-episode bridging arc between two seasons of the manga. Hamilton is both one of the best movies of all-time according to the Internet Movie Database and an Emmy nominee. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe is arguably as much television as cinema.
As such, it’s hard to judge Fear Street Part Three – 1666 entirely on its own merits.
Tying it all up.
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: fear street, fear street 1666, fear street part two, film, horror, Movie, netflix, non-review review, review, slasher | Leave a 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 final episode of Loki, streaming on Disney+.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: a marvellous escape, a marvelous escape, amy campbell, for all time always, he who remains, immortus, kang, kang the conqueror, kc nwosu, loki, review, Season finale | Leave a comment »
Space Jam: A New Legacy is content to be content.
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: AT&T, basketball, bugs bunny, Content, hbo, HBO Max, intellectual property, ip, lebron james, looney tunes, non-review review, review, space jam, space jam: a new legacy, streaming | Leave a comment »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney and with special guest Andy Melhuish, The Bottom 100 is a subset of The 250. It is a journey through the worst 100 movies of all-time, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.
This time, Albert Pyun’s Captain America.
Polio sufferer Steve Rogers is selected for a dangerous experiment that could turn the tide of the Second World War, being reborn as Captain America. When a mission behind enemy lines throws him into conflict with the Italian supervillain the Red Skull, Steve Rogers ends up trapped in the ice. However, he awakens just as his country needs him most.
At time of recording, it was ranked the 65th worst movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: andy melhuish, bonus, captain america, comic books, genre, history, Movie, Movies, supplement, The 250 | Leave a comment »
So, as I have mentioned before, I am launching a new video series as a companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch with every second Monday’s article, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel the following week. 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 month, with Aliens celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the film. In particular, how James Cameron designed one of the great sequels by refusing to simply repeat what worked about the original Alien. Instead, Aliens works in large part because it actively responds to and engages with Alien, in a way that enriches both films.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: alien, aliens, escapist, feminism, gender roles, james cameron, motherhood, omar ahmed, stereotypes, the escapist, video | Leave a comment »
The Escapist have launched a movie podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard and Richard Newby for the twenty-first episode of the year. With the release of Black Widow on streaming and in cinemas, there was only one movie to discuss. So we went for a deep dive into Marvel’s interquel, its character-centric movie for a dead Avenger.
You can listen to back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.
Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: agency, black widow, box office, comedy, feminism, films, humour, jack packard, Marvel Cinematic Universe, mcu, Movies, podcast, prequels, richard newby, the escapist movie podcast | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. It seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, which is both the highest grossing movie of 2020 at the global box office and the highest grossing film of all-time at the Japanese box office.
The success of Demon Slayer: Mugen Train is striking, because it is a very different sort of anime movie than the kind that normally breaks out. The Japanese box office has traditionally been dominated by anime films like Your Name, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle and others. The anime films that have typically broken out global are movies like Akira or Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion. These are all films with a very strong artistic viewpoint and a very consciously artisanal approach to storytelling.
In contrast, Demon Slayer: Mugen Train is a much more conventional sort of blockbuster in a much more modern style. It is a film written by a group credited under the corporate brand “Ufotable” and adapted from a manga written by an unknown author. It picks up directly from a television series, serving as a bridge between two seasons, with little attempt to orient casual viewers as to the character or plot. It is difficult to discern what exactly Demon Slayer: Mugen Train is saying about the world or even just about Japan, except for the broadest sorts of platitudes about duty and service.
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train feels like a cultural shift, representing a transition within Japanese popular animation that arguably just reflects broader shifts within global culture over the past decade or so. You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: anime, art auteur, box office, create, demon slayer, Demon Slayer - Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Mugen Train, Demon Slayer - The Movie: Mugen Train, demon slayer: the movie, Hayao Miyazaki, japan, meaning, mugen train, purpose | Leave a comment »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney and with special guest Scott Mendelson, The Bottom 100 is a subset of The 250. It is a journey through the worst 100 movies of all-time, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.
This time, Albert Pyun’s Captain America.
Polio sufferer Steve Rogers is selected for a dangerous experiment that could turn the tide of the Second World War, being reborn as Captain America. When a mission behind enemy lines throws him into conflict with the Italian supervillain the Red Skull, Steve Rogers ends up trapped in the ice. However, he awakens just as his country needs him most.
At time of recording, it was ranked the 65th worst movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: america, batman, cannon films, captain america, environmentalism, Forbes, j.d. salinger, Marvel Studios, matt salinger, mcu, nazis, podcast, Red Skull, scott mendelson, The 250, the red skull | Leave a comment »
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