The Goods: Film Reviews
There were certainly worse ideas in 2011 than rebooting the Spy Kids franchise. It’s a film concept that’s easy to refresh: recruit a new batch of charming kid actors, update the gadgets for the new era, weave in some family values, and spin up a kooky spy-fi premise.
Calling The Adevntures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl “ugly” is a grave understatement.
Machete isn’t strictly a Spy Kids spinoff.
A movie I like slightly less each time I see it, and now I’m up to four times, I think.
I haven’t seen Grindhouse, but my understanding is that it works as more than the sum of its parts, crafting a fantasy B-movie universe to dive into.
Nathan Rabin’s legendary My Year of Flops feature on AV Club groups bad movies into three categories:
Spy Kids 1 delivered on multiple competing genre fronts: a family-bonding adventure, a kiddie spy-action thriller, a light satire, and a digital editing/CGI showcase. Overall, a precarious, well-executed balancing act.
Spy Kids is, if not quite a gold standard for family-focused action-comedies, certainly an excellent specimen.
Alexandre Koberidze’s Georgian slice-of-life, pseudo-silent, slow film aesthetic meets magical realism and romantic comedy in What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, and the result is magnificent.
Nouchka van Brakel’s films center around women asserting their identity via a sexuality outside of the mainstream. In The Cool Lakes of Death, protagonist Hetty’s “taboo” is simply being a woman of assertive sexuality in prudish 19th century bourgeoisie.