Review: Past Lives

 

You know, back in the day I used to review non-nerdy/non-genre films. Let’s bring that back.

Past Lives is the feature film debut of director Celine Song, a playwright turned screenwriter who also happens to be a Korean Canadian immigrant. Seeing as this movie is about a Korean Canadian immigrant coming to terms with their past and the idea of “what if”, it’s probably fair to assume  we’re seeing some autobiographical storytelling here. This movie stars Greta Lee who, after years of being in the supporting cast, is getting an overdue shot at a lead role.

Here we are seeing another example of East Asian filming making an impact, as despite it essentially being a foreign language film it is still an American made one rather than a movie imported from overseas. I really feel that, ever since Crazy Rich Asians, producers/distributors/Hollywood have been taking more chances with potentially similar projects. While focusing on a different culture, my enjoyment of The Farewell is what spurred me to try to movie out.

I’ve said this since the earliest days of this blog and it’s still true: I am not always the correct audience for independent films and I find it often to be a crapshoot over whether I leave the theater feeling satisfied. This being the work of a first-time director, does this movie show promise of a new career or should the director maybe stick with writing plays?

Full review after the jump.

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 76: The Wiz (Film)

A new episode of our podcast, Adult Siblings Versus..., has dropped. This week we looked at another musical, The Wiz. A successful Broadway show but critically mixed, can this African-American show be improved on by adding Joel Schumacher and the guy who directed 12 Angry Men?

No. Sounds about white right.

If Diana Ross wats to play Dorothy, she will play Dorothy

More details after the jump.

Review: Spider-Man - Across the Spider-Verse

 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the sequel to the 2018 surprise hit Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. When I say “surprise hit” I don’t mean that it was a giant box office hit (it did quite well, though it started slow) but that it was a game changing animated film. Since then both Hollywood and Japan have been chasing the style dragon Spider-Verse made famous (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, being the most recent example that I can think of). I did not review the first film, but I did name it #2 of my Favorite Films of 2018. At the time I said I it was probably the best Spider-Man movie, but with the benefit of hindsight I think you can make a strong argument for it being the best superhero movie and the best animated film ever made (even though I liked Black Panther more at the time).

The original film did well enough that a sequel was announced soon afterwards. In fact, it was eventually announced it would have two sequels, making it a trilogy. Unfortunately, it was another Hollywood victim of the pandemic and delayed by quite a few years, no longer able to strike while the iron was hot. Even so, with how much it had influenced the movie industry since its debut, the hype train for the follow-up was still quite strong.

This film was again written by the hitmaker duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who also produced the flick, along with Dave Callaham. This time it was directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson.

Again, this is one of two greenlit sequel with the second, Beyond the Sider-Verse, being produced alongside this one. The idea of a mostly standalone film getting two sequels pushed ahead at the same time is reminiscent of other film trilogies such as Star Wars, Back to the Future, and The Matrix.  After five years of waiting, does the Spider-Verse manage to live up to is predecessor, ala The Empire Strikes Back, or is it a giant wet fart that should have stayed in the production truck, ala The Matrix Reloaded?

Full  review after the jump.

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 75: Chicago (2002 Film)

We've posted a new episode for our lookback at musical films over at Adult Siblings Versus. This week we're looking at the 2002 adaptation of Chicago. We may have both reached for the gun, but the real gun was the friends we met along the way.

No one walks out on Roxie Hart!

More details after the jump.

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 74: Grease

Whoops, I already forgot to put up the next episode of my podcast. I hope no one was eagerly awaiting it, but if you were then please consider following Adult Siblings Versus on your podcatcher of choice.

Anyway, our latest episode covered Grease and began our annual look at film musicals. Our next three episodes will similarly cover musicals.

It turns out John Travolta is the greatest performer of the 1970s!

More details after the jump.

Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the second sequel to the original film from 2014. It’s based on the 2008 comic book of the same name but not to be confused with the 1969 comic of the same name though it does share some characters.

This movie has been a long time coming, as it should have come out some time ago, striking while the iron from Avengers: Endgame was still hot. The short version as to why it took so long stems from the public firing and re-hiring of writer/director James Gunn. I plan on writing a blog about the DC Comics movie woes and wins very soon and I imagine I’ll go into greater details then, but to keep this blog as short as possible, Gunn was fired when tweets from a decade prior resurfaced of him making many terrible, offensive, and tasteless jokes leading to a backlash from some fans but apparently mostly far-right conservatives and Russian bots (this all happened after months of Gunn publicly shaming then-president Donald Trump, but I’m sure that’s a coincidence). Gunn was then nearly immediately hired by Warner Bros. to direct The Suicide Squad. Around that time Disney, now dealing with a much larger and less bot driven backlash from fans and actors about their knee jerk decision, offered him his job back which he accepted but as he agreed to do Suicide Squad that had to come first. This fiasco directly led to Gunn becoming the one of heads of DC’s film studio, but we’ll talk on that more another day. Add the COVID-19 shutdown into to equation and today’s movie is many years later than it should have been.

[Also note that Gunn also directed a TV/streaming Holiday Special starring the cast which acts as a brief prologue to this move but luckily it’s not that crucial if you want to skip.]

With Gunn already waist deep in building out the next phase of a competing studio, this movie is, and frankly always was going to be, the final GotG film with him in charge and possibly at all, as several actors have mentioned that they plan on this being their final performance. But with all the waiting for this final chapter the question remains: is it any good, or were all the Zack Snyder fans on Twitter correct when they said everything he does is “mid.”

Full review after the jump.

Adult Siblings Versus...Episode 73: Cool Runnings

Hi folks. While I'm unsure how many people regularly check this site at this point, I think it still may be a good idea to link my other projects here for cross-promotional purposes. Bear with me here.

A while back my sister and I started a podcast called "Adult Siblings Versus..." where we revisit media from our childhood and look at it with an adult perspectives to see how it holds up. Was The Little Mermaid mid? Is Muppet Treasure Island as good as well remember to be? That sort of thing. We have over 70 episodes recorded and we have covered everything from The Lion King to Coneheads to Ranma 1/2. It would be great if you could check us out.

Starting today I will post episodes on this blog, but if you like what you hear then please consider following us on your pod catcher of choice (Spotify, Apple Podcast, etc.)

The highest grossing live action Disney film at the time
.....somehow

More details after the jump.

Review: Dungeons & Dragons - Honor Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons is a super fun game that I miss playing very much. If you don’t quite understand what D&D is, I will try to explain it briefly: it is a tabletop, paper and pen role playing game, of which all mainstream video game RPGs are at least partially derived form. The game is played as a group who create characters to individually play as based on classes/archetypes found in the rule book. One player is the “Dungeon Master” or “DM” who designs the world the game takes place in and usually plays the roles of everyone in that world who aren’t the players. The player characters inhabit said world and roleplay an adventure as dictated by the DM. Actions, particularly complex actions and combat actions, are determined by rolling dice, usually a twenty-sided die, which are further enhanced by statistics of the individual character performing the action base. Basically, if you roll high you are successful and if you roll too low you are not successful. Don’t roll a natural 1.

Honestly D&D likely requires its own article to explain the full details and nutty history, but for the purposes of this review note that it’s been popular since its inception in 1974 and over the decades has produced a large amount of world expanding material from novels (lots of novels) to video games to Saturday morning cartoons. By now there’s a lot of officially licensed material tied to the D&D IP, so it seemed like a movie would inevitable.

And it already happened in the year 2000. And it bombed big time. It still got a pair of straight-to-home media sequels that I’m not certain how or if they’re related, but I know that they were also not all that well received. Because of this most folks have not held up hopes for another go with a film adaptation. However, the brand is now owned by Hasbro, the creators of Transformers, and because they want all the money it was just a matter of time before they made another attempt.

Which brings us to today’s review, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley. The trailers had made this flick out to not only have a much lighter and comedic tone than past efforts but also made a point of making very obvious references to various aspects of the game (seeing an owlbear in the original trailer made me drop the drink I was holding when I first saw it). Still, an awesome trailer that promises good fun means absolutely nothing in this day and age (See: Suicide Squad) so we are still left with the question of whether or not this reboot is any good.

Full review after the jump.