Sometimes we need to put our differences aside and admit when we’re wrong. Sony did this last year, when they swallowed their pride after their (disastrous) attempt to reboot the crown jewel in the Marvel empire. The frantic attempt to maintain control of the “Spider-Man” license before it could revert to Marvel Studios resulted in […]
Dagger Movie Night: “47 Meters Down” — Trapped in an Inescapable Cage
Like any other movie (and let’s just get this out of the way – this is a movie, not a film), “47 Meters Down” opens with a studio logo. Twentieth Century Fox? Nope. Paramount? Guess again. Warner Brothers? Give up? The correct answer — Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures, a company that earns its title by […]
Dagger Movie Night: “The Book of Henry” — Do Not Open
Films are divided into three acts. The first is typically called the Setup, in which we meet our protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters, and learn a bit about who they are and what they want. The first act ends with a turning point in which our hero(es) are set on a road toward adventure and […]
“Wonder Woman” — Nevertheless, She Persisted
“Wonder Woman” is a film with baggage. I’ll go straight to the TL;DR version and say that yes, it’s good. It’s fun. It’s retroactively topical, and at times even a little inspiring. It has fantastic cinematography, some solid performances, and a script that (sort of) makes sense. It accomplishes everything that’s needed from a Comic […]
“Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie” – Juvenile Humor at Its Finest
So apparently there’s this series of books that’s all the rage; about these kids named Harold and George, who use a hypnosis ring to convince their pain-in-the-ass teacher Mr. Krupp that he’s actually a superhero they’ve created called, yes, Captain Underpants. The ubiquitous crusader, stripped down to his Fruit of the Looms and wearing naught […]
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” — This One Avoids the Plank
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise is a lot like a fun uncle who seemed kind of hip and cool when you were twelve. Now he’s just a little embarrassing both in present time and in retrospect. It’s not only because he’s still wearing sunglasses indoors, or even that he’s trying to cover that bald […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Alien: Covenant” — In Space, No One Can Hear You Recycle
Ridley Scott’s “Alien: Covenant” opens with a catastrophic incident: a solar something-or-other that awakens a deep space vessel’s crew from cryo-sleep, and results in the death of a key team member. The deceased’s widow, second-in-command Somebody-or-other Daniels (Katherine Waterson), locks herself in her quarters to grieve, and in Hollywood fashion, she has laid out every […]
Dagger Movie Night: “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” — The Sword in the Groan
There is a very convincing argument that the Hollywood sausage machine lacks distinctive artistic voices; the meat tends to come out rather flavorless and uniform in appearance. Fanboys (and critics) love to ponder parallel universe scenarios: “Imagine _________ directed by _________.” This typically has more to do with what we imagine we’re not getting from […]
