The only way Disney’s live-action remake of its own Beauty and the Beast works is if you don’t compare it to the 1991 animated masterpiece. This is hard to do, though, because 1) you have seen the 1991 animated masterpiece, possibly many times, and 2) the remake keeps chasing it, going so far as to duplicate […]
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The Trainspotting soundtrack, one of the most influential albums of the ‘90s, belongs to the rare group of film soundtracks where the songs are the score. Director Danny Boyle found success with his first feature, 1994’s Shallow Grave, by supplementing the original score with pop tracks both classic and new. With Trainspotting, he chose to eschew […]
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The rapidly growing self-cannibalization wing of Walt Disney Pictures has manufactured a new live-action version of Beauty and the Beast that courted controversy from the moment it was announced. First people were upset by the casting of normal human actors in roles previously intended for enchanted knick-knacks (where else is a talking candlestick supposed to get work […]
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Zaniness is in short supply these days. In this grim-dark universe directed by Zack Snyder that we’ve created for ourselves, any attempt to be a little bonkers should be recognized. Why can’t we go to the movies and see Wolverine and Xavier get into a Three Stooges-esque poke fight? Where are the quick-zoom POV shots […]
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Jordan Peele’s horror-comedy Get Out is breaking new ground for its blunt, satirical take on the current state of race relations. But what many fail to notice amid the stark social commentary is Peele’s parallel presentation of disability alongside institutional racism. Disabled characters and people of color walk a similar path in Hollywood, both often […]
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There are few purer forms of entertainment than monkeys, wanton destruction, and comically oversized objects. So when a team of visionary filmmakers led by Merian C. Cooper decided to combine the three in 1933, the cinematic world was never the same. Besides casually revolutionizing special effects, King Kong would spawn six sequels, remakes and remake […]
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Kong: Skull Island is about people barging into a place they’ve never been before, dropping bombs to see how solid the land is, then acting indignant when the local wildlife responds defensively. It’s about humans punishing nature for being nature, and about bureaucrats embarking on research expeditions motivated by revenge. Fine, fine. It’s also about […]
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Welcome back! Last time, we took a look at movies based on U.S. history from Columbus to the end of the 19th century, and boy did we have fun! But there’s still plenty of history to cover, so we better get back in the groove. And what better place to jump back in than what […]
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Comics, like movies, are texts ripe for deconstruction. Animators and writers deliberately plot their stories for audience entertainment, while simultaneously commenting on the world around us. The power of the comic book is so strong that in 1954 a United States Senate Subcommittee convened to inquire as to whether (among other things) Batman and Robin’s […]
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Logan, directed by James Mangold, is the third film in the Wolverine trilogy (if you can call it that), the tenth film in Fox’s X-Men series, and a departure from the other films in the X-franchise. Not just because it’s rated R, either. This one is very much a classic genre film, with Wolverine playing […]
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Logan is the third standalone film for Hugh Jackman’s knife-fisted X-Men maverick Wolverine, completing the weary trilogy with something fans have long waited to see: Wolverine’s adamantium claws slashing through human skulls like they were piñatas. Yes, we’re in hard-R territory here, with Mr. Logan (and others) doing fatal, bloody damage to numerous people, swearing […]
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There’s a scene about two-thirds into David Fincher’s Zodiac in which David Toschi, the San Francisco homicide detective played by Mark Ruffalo, walks out of a screening of Dirty Harry in disgust, bemoaning the fact that he hasn’t solved the Zodiac case and “they’re already making movies about it.” (A colleague even jokes that “Harry […]
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