I find myself torn between basic appreciation of the filmmaking craft of King Richard and utter annoyance at its awards-bait laziness.
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King Richard (2021)
The first hour of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is one of the most entertaining blockbusters of 2000s. Gore Verbinski captures all of his budget on screen, with huge swashbuckling set pieces and chases and outstanding period production values. The action comes at a furious clip. You can almost taste the popcorn as you watch.
Roger Ebert claimed to review movies based on how well they achieved their goals rather than the goals themselves, and I’m here to apply that same philosophy. For Blue’s Big Musical Movie is pretty terrific at being an epic, thoughtful, mildly subversive triple-length episode of the hit toddler TV show.
About Time’s big gimmick is its time travel, yet it’s pretty horrible as a time travel movie-proper.
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It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2010)
Ned Vizzini was a young adult author who frequently and openly struggled with his mental health before dying by suicide at the age of 32 in 2013.
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Watchmen (2009)
Rarely has a numeric rating felt so insufficient in capturing the totality of my opinion towards a film than what you see below.
The Dancing Pig is a goofy little early film capturing a vaudeville-type stage dance — except one of the dancers is in an elaborate pig costume. I’m not enough of an early cinema history buff to declare this best costume ever filmed up to this point, but it’s gotta be up there — especially the cursed-looking teeth and tongue.
I’m fairly tolerant of the Chris Columbus outings, but watching Prisoner of Azkaban right on the tails of the first two films is like wandering the desert and then having a big glass of water.
I ended up watching this movie twice in short succession to prep for a podcast recording. This turned out to be the right choice as it effectively doubled my appreciation for the film; every visual pattern, every subtle cue of dialogue, every delicate and luscious composition comes in sharper relief once you know exactly what to look for. And it does so without compromising the elliptical, sensuous storytelling texture of the film.
The Emperor’s New Groove is one of those pieces of media that I’ve heard labelled “underrated” and “secretly great” so often that, well, it’s neither of those things. We as a culture (at least the millennials I know) collectively seem to remember this movie more fondly than just about any other Disney film.