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| Because caring about anything is lame and you're stupid! |
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.
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.
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| If Diana Ross wats to play Dorothy, she will play Dorothy |
More details after the jump.
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.
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.
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| No one walks out on Roxie Hart! |
More details after the jump.
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| It turns out John Travolta is the greatest performer of the 1970s! |
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.
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.)
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| The highest grossing live action Disney film at the time .....somehow |
More details after the jump.
