I did myself and this film a favor, I think, by not revisiting the original Aladdin first. I know that if I’d watched the 1992 classic before seeing the 2019 remake, or if I’d even watched it before writing this review, the new movie would seem worse to me. My memories of the original aren’t enough to color my opinion here, because as was the case with Dumbo, I haven’t seen the original on which this new remake is based since the 1990s.
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I went back and forth on whether I expected to enjoy this film. I was 11 when I got my first Pokémon game: Pokémon Red. I was at the perfect age to be in the first generation of children entranced by Pokémon.
Continue reading “Pokémon Detective Pikachu”
Disney’s 2019 remake of Dumbo, the problematic but otherwise lovable 1941 classic, is a perfect example of why these remakes should not be made.
I had low expectations going into Dumbo for a variety of reasons. While I haven’t seen any of the “live-action” (read: CG+) remakes of Disney’s remarkable older films before this one, popular consensus has been that they have been all over the place in terms of quality and worthiness to exist. Lindsay Ellis made an excellent video essay last year about the Beauty and the Beast remake, which I can’t recommend enough. In it, she details the ways in which, on paper, it is a shot-for-shot remake (so why should it exist at all?) and in practice, it misses the point or over-explains things that don’t need to be, and makes for a great exercise in cinematic uselessness.
Continue reading “Dumbo”I tweeted that I was going to start typing a review of this film immediately upon arriving home after seeing it. I think I went to bed, instead. Whoops.
Continue reading “Alita: Battle Angel”
I may never get used to the fact that I can see anime films in movie theaters in the modern day, thanks primarily to Fathom Events (although Dragon Ball Super: Broly is an actual release in theaters right now, day after day, rather than a limited event, which is huge I think). It is because of this bold new era we live in that I was able to see A Silent Voice (Japanese title translating to The Shape of Voice) this week at my local theater in Dayton, Ohio. Directed by Naoko Yamada, it is an adaptation of Yoshitoki Ōima’s manga of the same name.
Continue reading “Anime Week: A Silent Voice and The Night is Short, Walk On Girl”
The opening moments of Bumblebee nearly took my breath away. As God as my witness, my eyes watered a little, seeing all my childhood favorite Autobots rendered, mostly true to their original looks, on the big-screen. This, I was sure, was the Transformers film I’d been waiting on since Michael Bay’s first fugly steel wool Transformer images first started to trickle out in the lead-up to Transformers 2007. They had Soundwave! Shockwave had his old-fashioned, pompous voice, spot-on! Watch:
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I didn’t see National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation until only a few years ago, perhaps 2013 or 2014. For how popular it is, one might have guessed I’d avoided it intentionally, but I mostly just didn’t realize it existed. When I finally decided to pick it up on someone’s recommendation, I recognized the poster art on the Blu-Ray box: indeed, I had avoided this film…but as a child.
Continue reading “Brian’s Exploratory Christmas Endeavor ’18: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”
I’ll admit it. I could have paid closer attention to White Christmas. My attention was so divided, in fact, that I don’t remember what I was doing besides watching it. I may have been playing Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and in my defense, you would too.
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The Christmas Chronicles, one of Netflix’s barrage of original Christmas flicks for 2018, is not good. Directed by Clay Kaytis of The Angry Birds Movie, it is a mostly joyless, sometimes crass, often formulaic, persistently ugly movie with nearly no redeeming qualities. Its creators seemed to have had a hard time deciding between whether it was a kids’ film or something edgier–and it has none of the charm or personality to pull off either.
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I reviewed A Christmas Prince when it first came out, and while I thought it was just the worst, I could have imagined things still worse and let it pass mostly on its good looks. A Christmas Prince, if you don’t remember, is the schmaltzy ABC Family-style nothing-movie that 53 people watched every day for a while.
The film was vapid, trite, predictably-scripted, poorly-acted, and unsurprisingly, precisely what the average Netflix viewer was looking for. Given that this must have been made on a shoestring budget, it’s hard to deny Netflix their well-deserved win. They gambled on a sure-thing and it paid off.
Continue reading “Brian’s Exploratory Christmas Endeavor ’18: A Christmas Prince: Royal Wedding”
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