the escapist | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Review! On “The Witcher: Blood Origin” as a Bloody Mess…

Posted on December 15, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist earlier in the week, a review of the upcoming Netflix show, The Witcher: Blood Origin. It is a live action four-episode miniseries spinning directly out from the streaming service’s fantasy hit, The Witcher.

Blood Origin has had a famously troubled production, with the show being cut down from six episodes to four in the editing bay, and undergoing fairly involved reshoots to work around this truncation. The results are as muddling and disheartening as this back story suggests. Blood Origin is a show that is filled with lore and backstory, but with no interest in its characters or their motivations. It’s a frustrating mess, a show that has clearly been hacked apart and reconstructed to hit a pre-determined runtime.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: blood origin, editting, escapist, meddling, netflix, streaming, studio, the escapist, the witcher, the witcher: blood origin, witcher | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Willow” Gently Plays with Fantasy Tropes…

Posted on December 14, 2022 by Darren

I am doing weekly reviews of Willow at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Wednesday evening while the show is on, looking at the legacy sequel as it progresses from one episode to the next.

It is too much to call Willow a deconstruction or a subversion of classic fantasy tropes. Certainly, the show is often a celebration of the trappings of high fantasy, and a much more old-fashioned take on the genre than contemporary shows like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power or House of the Dragon. At the same time, the series is written with an understanding of the tropes and conventions of the genre, and a willingness to play with those ideas in a way that deepens and explores its own themes. Given that this is a show about divorce, Willow eagerly dives into familiar fantasy tropes about blood and lineage.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: Blood, escapist, fantasy, lineage, magic, purity, streaming, Television, the escapist, tropes, willow | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Fabelmans” as a Horror Story About Filmmaking…

Posted on December 13, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist yesterday evening. With the release of The Fabelmans on streaming today, it seemed like a good opportunity to explore Steven Spielberg’s loosely autobiographical family drama.

Spielberg’s recent films are preoccupied with his legacy, and the way in which his work has altered the cultural landscape. The Fabelmans is a much more personal movie, one that is more preoccupied with the art of filmmaking. The Fabelmans is a story about the power of the camera, and its ability to see things that are hidden from the human eye. The camera captures dreams, but it also reveals truths. The Fabelmans doesn’t romanticise this, but approaches with a palpable fear and dread.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Camera, divorce, escapist, family, Filmmaking, in the frame, space, steven spielberg, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On How Streaming Relies on Theatrical Release…

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Darren

We’re thrilled to be launching a fortnightly video companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch every second Monday, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel. And the video will typically be separate from the written content. 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 week, with cinemas in something of a fallow period between with releases of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Avatar: The Way of Water, it seemed like a good time to take a look at the complicated relationship within Hollywood, between streaming and theatrical releases. It has become increasing clear in recent years that streaming is not a viable replacement for the theatrical release model, but is instead largely dependent on it.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: cinemas, in the frame, netflix, streaming, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On “Die Hard” as a Christmas Movie…

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Darren

This week, with Christmas just around the corner, it seemed like a good opportunity to revist an older video, exploring how Die Hard isn’t just a Christmas movie, but is a truly great Christmas movie.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: bruce willis, christmas, die hard, escapist, in the frame, john mcclane, the escapist, video, yuletide | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How Film Culture Became Online Culture…

Posted on December 5, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the publication of the once-in-a-decade Sight & Sound poll last week, it seemed like a good opportunity to dig into the results and consider what they say about modern film culture.

The list has provoked some response online for being too modern and too recent, including films like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Get Out, Moonlight and Parasite. However, it’s part of a rich tradition of updating and modernising the cinematic canon. The most interesting aspect of the list is the way in which it demonstrates how film culture is online, how so many of the films to appear and climb on the list did so by becoming more readily and available, and by being embraced by an internet-literate generation of film critics.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: canon, cinema, criterion, film, in the frame, internet, modernity, Online, sight & sound, the escapist, twitter | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Strange Worlds” as a Love Letter to Disney’s Forgotten “Boys’ Own” Adventures…

Posted on November 29, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist yesterday. With the release of Strange World, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the latest animated film from Disney.

Many of the more recent high-profile Disney animated films have been anchored in the brand’s “princess” iconography, feeling like extensions of classics like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Part of what is interesting about Strange World is that it is a movie rooted in another, rather under-explored, chapter in the history of Disney’s animated filmmaking. Strange World is best understood as an extension of the wave of oft-forgotten “Adventureland” movies of the turn of the millennium, those movies aimed more overtly at boys, like Tarzan, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: adventure, adventureland, atlantis: the lost empire, disney, escapist, in the frame, strange worlds, tarzan, the escapist, treasure planet | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On Kevin Conroy as the Definitive Batman…

Posted on November 28, 2022 by Darren

This week, with the recent passing of Kevin Conroy, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at his work with the character of Batman, from Batman: The Animated Series through Justice League and beyond. What was it that made Conroy such a definitive and iconic take on the character? Why has he endured? What is that makes him unique?

Filed under: Television | Tagged: batman, batman: the animated series, bruce wayne, cartoon, dcau, in the frame, justice league, kevin conroy, the escapist, Voice Actors, voice performance | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Radical Empathy of “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion”…

Posted on November 27, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist on Friday. With the release of Glass Onion in theatres, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about Benoit Blanc, the film’s protagonist.

Glass Onion is built around the idea of murder mysteries and puzzleboxes. However, like Knives Out before it, the film is something of a criticism of a rigidly rationalist approach to detective fiction, of the idea that solving a crime is a strictly mechanical process. Instead, both Knives Out and Glass Onions are movies about the importance of empathy and humanism in understanding the true moral nature of crime. This is most obvious in Benoit Blanc, who is introduced as an outside observer of these crimes, but cannot escape their gravity.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: benoit blanc, crime, detective, detective fiction, empathy, glass onion, head, heart, humanism, in the frame, knives out, logic, morality, mystery, puzzles, rationality, Rian Johnson, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “Andor is the Best Star Wars in a Long Time”

Posted on November 25, 2022 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie and television 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 five-minute review of the first season of Andor, which can now be streamed on Disney+.