the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On the “Avatar” as a PG-13 “Aliens”…

Posted on March 14, 2021 by Darren

I published a new column at The Escapist this evening. With the re-release of Avatar in China this weekend, it seemed like an opportunity to take a look at Jameson Cameron’s blockbuster.

Avatar is often discussed in terms of its relationship to nineties films like Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas and even Fern Gully. However, Avatar is also notable in its similarities to James Cameron’s first proper blockbuster. Avatar often feels like a reworking of Aliens, albeit one aimed at a much broader audience. This is interesting, positioning Avatar as part of a wave of similarly four-quadrant-pleasing reboots and remakes of classic R-rated eighties properties.

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

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: aliens, avatar, blockbuster, China, james cameron, memory | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Raya and the Last Dragon” and the New Cinema of Reconciliation…

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. Given the release of Raya and the Last Dragon last week, it seemed like an appropriate time to discuss an interesting and emerging trend, what I call “the New Cinema of Reconciliation.”

The past five years have been extremely turbulent and difficult for the United States and the wider world, and so there is an understandable yearning for a return to normality, a palpable desire to believe that things could go back to normal and that the damage down to the social fabric could be repaired. This is a major recurring motif in films aimed at younger audiences, from Trolls World Tour through to Wonder Woman 1984. However, Raya and the Last Dragon illustrates how complicated this can be.

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

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: america, biden, raya and the last dragon, reconciliation, trolls world tour, trump, United States, wonder woman 1984 | Leave a comment »

225. Jurassic Park (#165)

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Jess Dunne and Alex Towers, The 250 is a fortnightly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.

Billionaire Richard Hammond is building a new sort of theme park. However, when an accident on site makes the investors nervous, Hammond is forced to invite a panel of experts to his remote island for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, one that doesn’t go exactly according to plan.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 165th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: alex towers, capitalism, dinosaurs, ellie statler, entertainment, horror, Ian Malcolm, jess dunne, john hammond, jurassic park, laura dern, monsters, podcast, pop culture, richard attenborough, sam neill, steven spielberg, The 250, the twilight zone | 1 Comment »

New Podcast! The Escapist Movie Podcast – “Does Raya and the Last Dragon Capture that Classic Disney Magic?”

Posted on March 9, 2021 by Darren

The Escapist have launched a movie podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard for the ninth episode of the year. We discuss Coming 2 America and Raya and the Last Dragon.

You can listen to back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.

Filed under: Podcasts! | Tagged: coming 2 america, coming to america, raya and the last dragon, the escapist, the escapist movie podcast | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On “Mad Max: Fury Road” and the Arbitrary Lines Between High and Low Culture…

Posted on March 9, 2021 by Darren

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 the Monday 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 channel – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.

This week, with the renewed and ongoing debate between “high” and “low” culture, between “art” and “content”, it seemed like a good time to take a look at one of the more fascinating films to straddle that line. Mad Max: Fury Road is the fourth entry in a long-running franchise, a film essentially built around a long car chase and explosions. However it’s also as pure a piece of cinema that has ever been made. It demonstrates the fungibility of those perceived boundaries.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: art, charleze theron, culture, george miller, high art, in the frame, low culture, mad max, mad max: fury road, martin scorsese, tom hardy | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Fifth Anniversary of “10 Cloverfield Lane”…

Posted on March 8, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. Because it’s the fifth anniversary of 10 Cloverfield Lane, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the paranoid and claustrophobic thriller. In particular, 10 Cloverfield Lane arrived on the cusp of a wave of similar movies about characters trapped and suffocated in claustrophobic horror: films as diverse as Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room and even Todd Haynes’ Carol.

Looking at these wave of films in hindsight, they suggest something simmering beneath the surface of American consciousness, a nightmare about characters who find themselves in hostile and oppressive environments and forced to survive as best they can. 10 Cloverfield Lane was perhaps the culmination of this cinematic trend, and galvanises many of those themes into a potent allegory for abuse and survival, ending with the revelation that not all of this monstrosity is trapped behind locked doors.

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

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 10 cloverfield lan, dna tratcheberg, escapist, film, in the frame, Movie, the escapist | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Mauritanian

Posted on March 8, 2021 by Darren

The Mauritanian is an odd film in a number of ways.

In some ways, The Mauritanian feels like it has arrived late to the party. Obviously, the War on Terror is still a major defining event of the twenty-first century. Guantánamo Bay is still open and housing forty inmates. It’s possible to trace the xenophobia that defines so much of contemporary American politics back to the War on Terror, most obviously by looking at the countries affected by President Donald Trump’s infamous “travel ban.” So the War on Terror is very much an ongoing concern that merits discussion and exploration.

Maur, Maur, Maur…

However, it is also a period of American history that has been very thoroughly explored in film and television, particularly in the context of prestige awards-season releases. The Hurt Locker won Best Picture a decade ago. Zero Dark Thirty was a major awards contender a few years after that. The War on Terror has been dissected through the lens of forensic introspection in movies like The Report and through broad satire in movies like Vice. As such, any movie hoping to explore the War on Terror exists in the shadow of larger culture.

This is perhaps the biggest issue with The Mauritanian. Director Kevin Macdonald’s earnest exploration of the incarceration and torture of Mohamedou Ould Salahi feels like a movie that should have been released during the early wave of this cinematic excavation. Even allowing for the fact that Salahi was only released five years ago, those five years feel like a very long time. The result of all this is that The Mauritanian feels like a movie displaced in time, feeling like a retread of the earliest films grappling with the topic, like Lions for Lambs.

Interrogating the War on Terror.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Benedict Cumberbatch, enhanced interrogation, film, Guantánamo Bay, jodie foster, Kevin Macdonald, Movie, non-review review, review, tahar rahim, the mauritanian, war on terror | Leave a comment »

224. Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata) – This Just In (#192)

Posted on March 6, 2021 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Phil Bagnall and Ronan Doyle, The 250 is a fortnightly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Ingmar Bergman’s Höstsonaten.

Eva invites her mother Charlotte to visit. It has been seven years since the mother and daughter last spoke. What initially seems like a welcome reunion quickly boils over as simmering resentments rise to the surface and the pair are forced to reassess their relationship to one another – and themselves.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 192nd best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: daughters, family, ingmar bergman, ingrid bergman, liv ullmann, mothers, phil bagnall, play, ronan doyle, Stage, Sweden, The 250, theatrical | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “WandaVision” Lags Behind “Legion” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”….

Posted on March 5, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. Today marked the release of the WandaVision finale, so it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the season as a whole, and where it stands in terms of the modern television landscape.

One of the most striking aspects of the first half of WandaVision‘s first season was the skill and fidelity that the show demonstrated in recreating classic television sitcoms. The show’s basic conceit found the characters journeying through television’s history and hurdling towards the present. Unfortunately, WandaVision stumbled when it hit the present, particularly when compared to two relatively recent shows tackling similar themes and working in similar genres blending fantasy and reality as meditations on trauma and mental health problems: Legion and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: crazy ex-girlfriend, escapist, Guilt, in the frame, legion, Marvel Cinematic Universe, mcu, Mental Health, power, responsibility, Television, violence, wanda maximoff, wandavision | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” and Passing the Torch to the Next Generation…

Posted on March 3, 2021 by Darren

This week, we took a look at the strange wonder that was Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and the fact that it would be impossible to imagine a franchise drawing the shutters down in the same way these days. The Undiscovered Country is not only an explicit rejection of nostalgia, it is also an interrogation of the past, refusing to pull any punches in its look at the original Star Trek. It’s an approach that could never happen today, and popular culture is all the weaker for that.