My Own Little World

Weird, quirky movies are my jam sometimes. There’s something about them that just get to me. Maybe it’s because I find them to have a little extra creativity required, or maybe it’s because I identify with their outlying nature compared to the mainstream – whatever it is, I like them. Guillermo del Toro’s latest, The Shape of Water , definitely falls into that category. It’s got a fish man, a mute woman, and a romance between the two. As if that weren’t enough, the film also takes place during the Cold War, a setting that amplifies its themes quite a bit. Basically, it is the definition of strange, and it’s also an incredibly rich theatrical experience. I’m not terribly familiar with del Toro’s previous work (I’ve watched maybe a third of Crimson Peak ), but I feel like that doesn’t disqualify me for being absolutely enthralled with his direction of this film. Every visual aspect of this fits together marvelously, especially the set and creature design and the color palette....

I don’t usually care for throwaway entertainment, especially in film. I see movies as a way to tell a story or make a point and not just a medium of entertainment. That’s why I was not very excited to see Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle . I didn’t really have much nostalgia for the original, and the trailers for this film depicted it as a big, bombastic action movie with lots of quippy dialogue. And…that’s exactly what I got. Jumanji is exactly what you’d think it is, except that it is one of the best examples of popcorn entertainment I’ve seen in the past few years. It’s not particularly inventive with the way it tells its story, but it does a good job of being disposable while leaving a very pleasant aftertaste. The best part of the film is, quite surprisingly, the performances. Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, and Jack Black all play against type, and they do such a good job. If you’ve ever wondered what those three would act like if they were nerdy, mildly unattractive teenag...

One of the more puzzling movies for me to look at is the 1991 Disney adaptation of Beauty and the Beast . Being so beloved by so many, I feel like I have almost a responsibility to like it, which I do. The music is catchy and some of Disney's best, while the animation is top-notch and holds its own against the spectacular hand-drawn animation of The Lion King  and The Prince of Egypt . That being said, I've always felt that the story was a little lacking in character development. Enter Disney's "live action renaissance," the period of the past few years in which Disney has gone all in with remaking some of their animated classics in live-action form. So far, they've had middling to positive success in doing so with Alice in Wonderland , Maleficent , Cinderella , The Jungle Book , and Pete's Dragon ; and if you look at Disney's calendar of upcoming events, you can pretty much guarantee that your Disney classic of choice will be getting the same trea...

As soon as I saw who was involved in The Post , I was hooked – you give me Steven Spielberg directing people like Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, and it’s kind of like the most surefire Oscar contender you can get. And I got exactly the film I expected with The Post : a high-quality, entertaining, and even slightly informative movie with some great performances and few if any flaws behind the camera. It’s probably irrational for me to assume that The Post could be any greater than the sum of its parts, but that sum – as good as it was – is something I have seen before. Spielberg has gotten into a groove of these kinds of movies, these politically-charged dramas that tend to show a correlation between the world of the past and the world of today. The Post does everything that films like Lincoln and Munich have already done and done well; as lazy as that may sound for someone with Spielberg’s profile, this film does make some very pointed connections between the Nixon and Trump ad...

Many films have great concepts. In fact, most films thrive on them, especially in their marketing, and especially if they’re not already part of a franchise. A good concept is the first step to making a good film. A good concept on its own, however, does not a good movie make. There has not been a film recently that shows this more than Bright , Netflix’s latest big film project. Directed by David Ayer ( Suicide Squad , Fury , and End of Watch ) and starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, it has a great concept – a cop action thriller in a world of both human and mythical creatures – but unfortunately can’t seem to make the pieces work. A huge part of this is the script. Max Landis wrote the original script that underwent a rewrite by Ayer, and it just doesn’t work. It’s extremely vulgar, which is not a critique on its own, except that it seems like the profanity is only there to remind you of the film’s rating. I’ve seen plenty of films that use very poor language but do so ...

I have loved Aaron Sorkin for a long time. I first encountered his writing with The Social Network and fell in love with it watching The West Wing , The Newsroom , and Moneyball . He has a very unique style with fast, witty dialogue that says a lot in very little time; when combined with the walk-and-talk technique of The West Wing , it becomes an incredibly effective tool. I have never disliked his writing, even though it does get a little soapboxy from time to time. When I heard Sorkin was going to sit in the director’s chair for the first time, I got incredibly excited. I didn’t know what kind of visual style to expect from him, but I did know that the same writing that I fell in love with would be back in full effect. With Molly’s Game , Sorkin proves himself to be a competent but not (yet) adventurous director. There are parts of this film that definitely prove there is a lot of potential, but it’s not fulfilled here. Most of this I see through the film’s length: at two ...

This is a rare occasion for me. I don’t think The Greatest Showman is a good movie, but I did enjoy watching it most of the time. It’s not a guilty pleasure; it’s more like a sugary, rich dessert that doesn’t strike me as inventive or unique but also doesn’t make me sick of its richness. What does this, no doubt, are the musical numbers. They took me out of The Greatest Showman in the best way possible. Let’s be real: this movie doesn’t know what character development is. It doesn’t know how to craft a compelling story. What it does know how to do is tell a story through music, and for that reason it’s actually quite tolerable to a fan of musicals like myself. It’s not just that the music itself is good; the numbers are filmed well in their own right. They are choreographed and shot quite competently, and the vocal performances are excellent as well. My personal favorites were “Rewrite the Stars,” “The Other Side,” and the likely Oscar contender “This Is Me.” There’s o...

I have to admit that I am not as familiar with Ridley Scott’s filmography as much as I should. I have seen only a handful of his movies, but there has always been an element of risk involved with them. Blade Runner and Alien changed science fiction films forever, while some of his more recent works have seen the revitalization of dead genres like what Gladiator did for Rome-era epics. In his most recent film, the now 80-year-old Scott took a risk of a different kind. All the Money in the World originally starred Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty, but after his sexual assault allegations Scott opted to reshoot all of Spacey’s scenes with only a month left until release with his supposed original first choice for the role, Christopher Plummer. They re-edited as they reshot, getting all of Plummer’s scenes filmed in a little over a week. Why am I telling you all of this? It’s for one reason, and only one: there’s little to no evidence of the film’s hectic reshoots in the final ...

Movies about the making of other movies are often really tricky to get right. The most notable examples of this struggle in my mind are Hitchcock , about the making of Psycho , and Saving Mr. Banks , about the making of Mary Poppins . Both are perfectly enjoyable films, but they struggle with a balance between summarizing the film’s existing Wikipedia article and giving us a new take on an already somewhat known story. Neither of these films succeeds at walking that line. In comes The Disaster Artist , James Franco’s look into the production of one of the best worst movies of all time. It does what no film about a film has done for me before: it separates itself from the film it is about enough to stand on its own as a great film. That being said, I do not think that it would be a smart move to watch The Disaster Artist without seeing The Room . There’s so many things in this film that are made that much funnier if you’ve already seen The Room – especially James Franco’s a...