I’m thrilled to be launching 3-Minute Reviews on Escapist Movies. 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 feature film review to the channel, discussing Nomadland.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 3 minute review, escapist, francis mcdormand, nomadland, the escapist, three minute review | 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. I’ll be joining the wonderful Jack Packard and the fantastic KC Nwosu to break down WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki as they come out.
This week, we take a look at the fifth episode of WandaVision, including the tropes and conventions of eighties sitcoms, the Full House allusions, who the real bad guy is, and – of course – that universe-cracking closing cameo.
Filed under: Podcasts!, Television | Tagged: a marvellous escape, cameo, conspiracy, continuity, marvel, mcu, Quicksilver, Sword, wanda maximoff, wandavision | Leave a comment »
The Escapist have launched a movie podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard and Will Cruz for the fifth episode of the year. We talked a little bit about how disappointingly conventional this year’s awards season looks to be, but the real meat of the podcast was a discussion of Sam Raimi’s much (and perhaps deservedly) maligned Spider-Man 3.
You can listen to back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.
Filed under: Podcasts! | Tagged: awards season, escapist, jack packard, movie podcast, spider-man 3, the escapist, the escapist movie podcast | 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 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 penultimate season of The Expanse winding down and with the frequent comparisons to Game of Thrones, I took a look at what the two shows have in common – and where they differ from one another.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: Game of Thrones, the escapist, the expanse, video, youtube | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. Because Promising Young Woman is garnering some awards attention, I figured it was worth a look.
Promising Young Woman is a remarkably well-constructed film. It’s a film that is very actively engaged with the idea of watching and looking – what characters choose to see, and what they choose to ignore. However, the film is also very much aware of how audiences will see the film. It is cleverly constructed in such a way as to play with the audience’s gaze, and to challenge the way that they look at the film – the way the viewer looks at its actors, its characters, and the kind of story that it is telling. It stares its audience right in the eye, and it never blinks.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: audience, awards season, GAZE, promising young woman, the escapist, video, viewer narrative | Leave a comment »
Last year, I was thrilled to spend a lot of time on The Time is Now discussing the second season of Millennium. Since the podcast has moved on to the third season, I have taken something of a step back as a guest. That said, I was flattered to get an invitation to discuss Antipas with guest host Tony Black.
Antipas is an interesting piece of television. It’s effectively a grabbag of the familiar horror movie tropes and clichés that writers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz love: it’s The Omen, Don’t Look Now, The Shining and a few others. It’s effectively a gigantic homage to the huge influences on Carter’s work with both Millennium and The X-Files, even if it doesn’t exactly cohere as a story in its own right.
As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.
Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: antipas, don't look now, lucy butler, millennium, podcast, the omen, the shining, the time is now, the x-files, tony black | Leave a comment »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney and with special guest Scott Mendelson, The 250 is a weekly journey through the list of the 250 best movies of all-time, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.
This time, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
Three stories unfold across Los Angeles over the course of three days, featuring an interlocking set of criminal characters who find their lives on an unexpected collision course. Is there any rhyme or reason to the course that these characters chart, or is it all arbitrary chaos? That’s ultimately up to the viewer to determine for themselves.
At time of recording, it was ranked the 8th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: belief, blockbuster, bruce willis, fate, independent cinema, indie, john travolta, morality, nihilism, pulp fiction, religion, scott mendelson, The 250, uma thurman | 1 Comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. Because Deadpool was released five years ago this month, it seemed like a good time to take a look back at the two films in the series.
Deadpool tends to be discussed in terms of the humour and self-awareness that it brought to the superhero genre. However, that isn’t the most interesting aspect of the films. Instead, what’s so fascinating about the two films is what they use that humour and self-awareness to accomplish. Deadpool effectively smuggles an eighties action movie throwback into the superhero genre by cloaking it in irony. It is a fascinating hybrid of two schools of action movie cinema.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: action movie, Deadpool, humour, irony, ryan reynolds, self-awareness, superhero, throwback | 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 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 rumours that Chris Evans might be returning to the role of Steve Rogers, I took a look at why this would be a bad thing for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has the opportunity to push ahead and evolve in a way that the comics never have been.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: captain america, chris evans, continuity, evolution, in the frame, marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, mcu, progress, steve rogers | 1 Comment »
The Escapist have launched a movie podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard for the fourth episode of the year. We talked about the upcoming Spy Kids reboot, the planned release of Raya and the Last Dragon, and we expounded on The Expanse.
You can listen to the episode directly here, back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.
Filed under: Podcasts! | Tagged: jack packard, raya and the last dragon, spy kids, the escapist movie podcast, the expanse | Leave a comment »
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