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 The Batman, which is in theatres on Friday.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 3mr, bruce wayne, escapist, matt reeves, Robert Pattinson, the batman, three minute review | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the penultimate episode of Peacemaker released this week, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at how the show – along with a lot of James Gunn’s work – exists in conversation with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen.
Gunn has been very candid that Watchmen is a major influence on his films, particularly his superhero films. However, what’s most striking about Gunn’s use of Watchmen as a source of inspiration is the fact that he actually engages with the text. Many of Gunn’s projects, particularly The Suicide Squad and Super, are very much in conversation with Watchmen, asking what that core text means in a slightly different modern context. That is just as true of Peacemaker, which not only draws from the comics that inspired Watchmen, but also extrapolates boldly out from Watchmen.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: alan moore, dave gibbons, escapist, in the frame, James Gunn, Peacemaker, the escapist, watchmen | Leave a comment »
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of James Gunn’s Peacemaker, which is streaming weekly on HBO Max. The seventh and penultimate episode of the show released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.
Much of the discussion around the show has focused on the soundtrack, with James Gunn drawing heavily from hair metal bands. This gives the soundtrack a unique texture in the modern superhero genre, but it also plays into the larger themes of the show itself. The choice of hair metal says a lot about the character of Christopher Smith, particular compared to everything else that the show has told the audience about the protagonist. Indeed, hair metal suggests something close to a path to redemption for a character who struggled to find other means of escape and exposure.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: art, escapism, escapist, escapist magazine, hair metal, james cena, Peacemaker, Rock and roll, stop dragon my heart around, the escapist | Leave a comment »
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 Jackass Forever, which is in theatres now.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, film history, Jackass, jackass forever, movie reviews, review, silent movies, the escapist | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of The Batman, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at Matt Reeves’ other recent films. In particular, Reeves directed the last two films in the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy.
The recent Planet of the Apes prequels are the rarest of things: beautifully made and powerfully resonant blockbusters. The films are constructed with genuine artistry and craft, but – more than that – they speak to the particular moment in which they were released. These are films that against all odds manage to capture something of the soul of America on celluloid, beautifully encapsulating a deeply troubled era, and skilfully using their nostalgia in a way that deepens their themes and enhances their resonance.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: america, blockbusters, dawn of the planet of the apes, escapist, matt reeves, planet of the apes, rise of the planet of the apes, the batman, the escapist, war for the planet of the apes | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. The first season of Yellowjackets wrapped up this week, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take a look at what has become the buzziest show on television.
Yellowjackets has a premise very similar to Lost, featuring a time-shifted narrative following a bunch of plane-crash survivors trapped in the wilderness as potentially supernatural events unfold around them. However, Yellowjackets follows the survivors after their return to civilisation rather than before the crash. Yellowjackets is essentially a paranoid survival horror, and one that resonates with these divided and chaotic times. It’s a show about the horrors of what happens when civilisation collapses and when people turn to monstrous belief in sheer desperation, but also about what it’s like to live with that.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: belief, conspiracy theories, escapist, fear, horror, in the frame, paranoia, qanon, survival horror, yellowjackest | Leave a comment »
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re hopefully doing a series of recaps and reviews of James Gunn’s Peacemaker, which is streaming weekly on HBO Max. The first three episodes of the show released today, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.
Gunn’s filmography is saturated with an affectionate nostalgia for the eighties. It comes to the fore in Peacemaker, down to the casting of John Cena. Cena is a lead actor in the style of classic eighties “hard body” action heroes like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, that nostalgia does not exist purely for its own sake. Peacemaker is a show engaged with modern masculinity, in particular deconstructing the sort of eighties masculinity embodied by its central character. Peacemaker is a story about whether its lead character can change and evolve, emerging from a cocoon as he investigates “Project: Butterfly.”
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: 1980s, eighties, escapist, hard bodies, James Gunn, masculinity, nostalgia, Peacemaker, television show, the escapist, the suicide squad, tv | Leave a comment »
The Escapist have launched a new pop culture podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard and KC Nwosu or the first episode. With the recent release of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about the recent Marvel Studios productions.
Filed under: On Second Thought, Podcasts! | Tagged: a marvellous escape, a marvelous escape, escapist, escapist magazine, hawkeye, jack packard, kc nwosu, spider man, the escapist, your featrue presentation | Leave a comment »
I published a new column at The Escapist earlier this week. With the recent releases of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Spider-Man: No Way Home, it seemed like a good opportunity to reflect on the argument that franchise brand extensions exist “for the fans.” What does that even mean?
As a fan myself, I find myself unsettled and disturbed by the idea that these sorts of properties should exist primarily for the satisfaction and consumption of the existing fanbase, not least because it means validating certain kinds of fans above others and pushes franchises towards an aesthetic conservativism that often strangles them. Perhaps the best thing to do “for the fans” is simply to make media as good as possible and let history sort the rest out.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: doctor who, escapist, fan service, fandom, films, for the fans, ghostbusters: afterlife, Movies, spider-man: no way home, star trek, star wars, star wars: episode ix - the rise of skywalker, the escapist, the rise of skywalker, tv | Leave a comment »
the m0vie blog 
New Escapist Column! In the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” Franchise…
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist earlier this week. With the release of Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the larger franchise spawned from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the defining horror movies of the seventies, an innovative and influential low-budget indie that demonstrated what was possible outside the mainstream production machine. However, few horror classics have been as poorly served by the sequels that followed as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. While most other major horror franchises can boast a genuine (or even just cult) classic among their sequels, the sequels to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre have been a slow and brutal slog into generic horror nonsense. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just the latest stop on that journey.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: commentary, escapist, gore, horror, in the frame, leatherface, slasher, texas chain saw massacre, the escapist, the texas chainsaw massacre, violence | Leave a comment »