You have to hand it to Marvel Studios. Not only have they successfully mastered the seemingly unrepeatable construction of a cinematic multiverse that grows richer with each new installment; they’ve accomplished this using second and third-tier characters, such as the titular Guardians of the Galaxy, who weren’t already licensed to rival companies like their heavy […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Unforgettable” — An Overly Campy Dramatization of Exes
Attention men! You might want to find something to keep your wife or girlfriend busy this weekend if she’s threatening to see “Unforgettable.” The film plays like a warning shot to every guy who has ever given his Significant Other reason to consider what she might do to you if you left her, particularly for […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Gifted” — Checking the Boxes of Melodrama
Barely five minutes into “Gifted,” the new film from director Marc Webb (best known for inheriting the “Spider-Man” franchise from Sam Raimi and then driving it immediately into a brick wall), it becomes apparent that you’re watching the cinematic equivalent of an adult coloring book, designed and then filled in for you by a computer, […]
Dagger Movie Night: “The Boss Baby” — Throw This Baby Out With the Bathwater
FULL DISCLOSURE (1): I arrived uncharacteristically late to my scheduled press screening of “The Boss Baby.” This had the notable effect of improving the film by virtue of its abbreviated runtime, raising my opinion from “festering, putrid malignancy” to “unbearably bad.” This is an improvement that can only be fully understood by enduring either “The […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Beauty and the Beast” – Stale and Old as Time
Somewhere in a parallel universe, Disney produced a live-action “Beauty and the Beast” directed by Guillermo del Toro. No singing; just dark beauty, true to the source. Somewhere in time and space, that film is unspooling in a theater even as I write this, and a new generation of children – girls and boys alike […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Kong: Skull Island” — Bananas in the Best Possible Way
As “Kong: Skull Island” enters its final act, there’s a memorable exchange between anti-war photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) and aggressively gung-ho Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), one that more or less crystalizes the film’s intent as both a semi-remake and a standalone adventure. “The world is bigger than us,” Weaver intones melodramatically, […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Before I Fall” — Shameless “Groundhog Day” Rip-Off Feels Like Déjà Vu
One could make the very compelling argument that “Before I Fall” is an example of audience participation filmmaking. Shallow and popular high school student Samantha (Zoey Deutch) spends the entire runtime reliving the day of the car accident that killed her; the audience spends the entire runtime reliving the movie “Groundhog Day.” This shameless remake/rip-off […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Get Out” — A ‘White Guilt’ Film Torn Between Camp and Horror
Horror films are notoriously difficult to review. It’s a genre predicated on the ability to shock and surprise, which means reading a write-up like this one is sort of like getting the punchline before the joke. However, in the case of “Get Out,” if you’ve already seen the trailer, you’ve seen just about every plot […]
