The Goods: Film Reviews
It feels scientifically engineered to be as boring as possible: People having astonishingly vacant conversations in beige rooms, the central murder mystery given the urgency of a tax return. There’s a long stretch of inexplicable 1982-level CGI. I tried to find some avant garde vibes to love, but it’s just too dull.
There’s not a single thing I like more here than in Knives Out, but I do like almost everything almost as much.
The best Shrek movie, at least prior to 2022 (unless your nostalgia holds part 1 afloat like it does for so many millennials, myself included). And this comes from someone who thought the character was really stupid in the Shrek sequels. This is basically a big Zorro riff, but with a cat in the lead, and it’s quite charming and zippy. Something was going on at Dreamworks from 2009-2011. This isn’t Dragon tier, but it is Kung Fu Panda tier.
The characters are cartoonish and not especially deep, but the production is excellent. The settings have whiffs of Burton expressionism, the large-scale choreography is like a shot of cinematic espresso (especially “Revolting Children”).
Zemeckis’s best movie in many years. It’s a caper that doubles as a nifty CGI-driven thriller (recreating the Twin Towers and flying audiences above them) and an artistic confessional by Zemeckis (a creator who must conquer the next obstacle, even if it means potential self-destruction).
I wish I had seen this in 3D.
Not the zippiest narrative, nor one that treads much surprising narrative ground, but there’s a lot of pleasure in letting movie stars be movie stars in a throwback period spy drama. Both Pitt and Cotillard are magnetic. This might be Robert Zemeckis’s least characteristic work — the only audacious visual gimmick is a sandstorm that accompanies some car sex.
I will need to watch this again to fully process it. As a piece of entertainment, it is astringent and uncomfortable and not especially “good” in the common usage of the word. As a creative exercise of reflecting on a toxic compulsion to create art , a purging of a career’s worth of angst and demons, and an F-U to critics and hard-to-please audiences, it is deeply compelling.
Pretty much the only thing I love in this is Anne Hathaway absolutely chewing through the film with the most outlandish accent you’ve ever heard. The CGI mice are horrible. And there are a few exciting scenes, but they’re frontloaded.
A wacky movie that shifts from black comedy to a simultaneous western and courtroom drama pastiche. Very anarchic sense of humor partially indebted to the cheap sex comedies of the era. But Zemeckis’s direction is a lot of fun, with some outstanding set pieces. Slightly less than the sum of its parts, but pretty good nonetheless.
There’s definitely some diminishing returns on the Back to the Future saga, but it stays fresh and fun enough, and feels slightly more coherent as a standalone story than Part 2. It’s also a very satisfying closer to a trilogy that has, against all financial incentives, remained a trilogy.