Dir. Marc Webb. Starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx Every movie adaptation of the Batman story has to cope with the Joker in the same way that whenever Poochie’s not on screen, the other characters should be asking, “Where’s Poochie?” “The Night Gwen Stacy Died” doesn’t cast quite as long a shadow as Poochie… Read More The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
Dir. Richard Thorpe. Starring Esther Williams, Jimmy Durante, Peter Lawford It’s not a hard and fast rule. Exceptions include movies like Blazing Saddles, the Monty Python films, Once Upon a Time in America. But when I see four separate writers credited for a screenplay I get nervous. It’s romantic to think that when only one… Read More On an Island with You (1948)
Dir. Clarence Brown. Starring Mickey Rooney, James Craig, Frank Morgan I enter ninety percent of the movies I watch with an almost a ludicrous amount of optimism. I want them to surprise me and move me; at least once a week, I think to myself as I start a movie, “Maybe this will be the… Read More The Human Comedy (1943)
Dir. Jon Watts. Starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Willem Dafoe Spoilers, but also I might be the last person in America to see this. In Spider-Man 2, there are two climactic action scenes which must be considered alongside the best sequences of this subgenre. First, the one where Spider-Man stops a speeding train, saving the many… Read More Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Dir. Rodney Ascher I refer back to this moment in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a lot, partly because it’s funny and mostly because it’s useful. Harry has just given an interview to The Quibbler about the return of Voldemort, and it’s selling like hotcakes and creating a fair amount of mail… Read More A Glitch in the Matrix (2021)
Dir. Jamie Roberts In 2017, the documentary LA 92 was released for the 25th anniversary of the riots resulting from the verdict in the case which found the four officers who beat Rodney King not guilty. The film nods at some of the causes of the riots which created a fever pitch in Los Angeles… Read More Four Hours at the Capitol (2021)
Dir. Vince Marcello. Starring Joey King, Jacob Elordi, Joel Courtney Like most of its constituent pieces, The Kissing Booth is primarily interesting because of where we’ve seen it somewhere else before. It’s the 21st Century in this film, but I can hardly remember anyone even looking at a cell phone, let alone getting into the… Read More The Kissing Booth (2018)
Dir. George Waggner. Starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers Dir. William F. Claxton. Starring Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun Both of these pictures—one a classic horror movie from Universal and the other a marvelously terrible horror movie that made me go “Aw!” for ninety minutes—begin with scientific invocations. In 1941, one goes… Read More The Wolf Man (1941) and Night of the Lepus (1972)
Dir. Cate Shortland. Starring Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour Spoilers great and small abound for a recent MCU entry, but honestly there aren’t even that many in here past what you’d find in your average review on a fan website. Black Widow is one of those MCU movies which doesn’t ask you to come… Read More Black Widow (2021)
Dir. Leigh Whannell. Starring Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Michael Dorman Metacritic’s compilation of year-end critics’ lists tells us that Time, Garrett Bradley’s documentary, ranks as the thirteenth most-noted film of the year. (They do some math, which you can read through for yourself.) The Invisible Man is fourteenth. I think it’s appropriate that both of… Read More The Invisible Man (2020)
Seeing Things Secondhand 