The most enduringly memorable elements of Stephen King’s most enduringly memorable novel involve seven pre-teen outcasts uniting to battle a shape shifting creature they collectively refer to as It. Each child possesses a perceived weakness, handicap, or social deficiency that ostracizes them from his or her peers, and yet these character traits are what ultimately […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Atomic Blonde” — The Visual Poetry of Excessive Violence
About halfway through “Atomic Blonde,” our heroine, MI6 super-agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) is suddenly faced with getting her wounded informant “Spyglass” (Eddie Marsan) to safety. They’re caught in the middle of a crowded Berlin protest march and a sniper is trained on them from a window somewhere high above the street. Ducking into the […]
“A Ghost Story” — No Light at the End of the Tunnel
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me this unique opportunity to offer a brief (and thoroughly simplified) lesson on cinematic aspect ratios and their historical significance. This is an important topic if we’re going to talk about “A Ghost Story.” You see, in the long-ago era of early televisions, the screen roughly approximated what you’d see in […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Spider-Man: Homecoming;” Marvel Spins a Joyously Fun and Funny Web
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 […]
