The Goods: Film Reviews
The animation is peerless, the songs are occasionally invigorating, and Moana herself is one of Disney’s greatest protagonists, but the script and quest suffer a bit from exposition overload, pacing hiccups, and fluctuating stakes that keep it from soaring to all-time heights. Still a strong and memorable outing that I’ll always be keen to revisit.
An epic romance and coming-of-age story told with tremendous humanity and precision and life. Yet it has its share of problematic storytelling and is certainly too long. Too much sex, too, but I suppose it adds to the palpable intimacy between the leads.
Woody Allen’s first actor-director-writer film is a parody criminal biopic/documentary. It doesn’t always hold together, but as a series of skits it is astonishingly hilarious.
I had forgotten this is kind of… bad?
I devour this kind of mumblecore stuff as comfort food, but even for me this one is a tough sell.
I did really like how weirdly meta the premise is — Karpovsky playing a guy named Karpovsky on a film tour for a real movie Karpovsky made.
This capsule review has been superseded by a full-length review you can read here:
The visuals are some of the most breathaking I’ve ever seen: free-flying comic art with intense neon splashes and irrepressible energy. The story is amazing too, if a bit slow to get going. One of the best superhero movies, period.
I love Lizzy Caplan.
A bit too frenetic, and the live action segment sucks the energy out of the story, but the animation is jaw-dropping and the story otherwise buoyant.
It still holds up, hilarious and human. Comedy that actually cares about its characters, themes, and stories. Carell is phenomenal. But the criticisms are right, too: very male-centric, iffy on race and gay jokes, and longer than it needs to be.