Mark McPherson's Blog, page 50
October 16, 2019
“Zombieland: Double Tap” Review
Ten years have passed but the post-apocalyptic world of Zombieland has more or less remained the same. There are some new zombie types, a few more non-zombie faces and plenty of new zingers to sling. The snappy sass of the familiar foursome is still present and strong enough to keep up with a fast pace. It’s just too bad that the cast of Double Tap has to pull double duty in a film that offers them little backup.
The film goes about giving just enough for each character to shine in their own way. Co...
October 15, 2019
“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” Review
The good news is that the sequel to 2014’s Maleficent has some notable improvements. It’s more colorful, magical, features a more solid story and a significant reduction in rape allegories. In its place, however, is a more milquetoast fantasy of familiar elements that comes off as Ferngully meets Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
The story is at least interesting enough to have some chemistry before settling into its tiresome epic nature. A division between the Moores and a kingdom is soon to be...
October 14, 2019
“Gemini Man” Review
It’s clear that in the two decades leading up to Gemini Man finally being produced that the focus was more on the tech than the script. Branded with gimmicks, the talk of the picture is more about how impressive and believable a computer-generated Will Smith appears on the screen. Another point of praise comes from an increased frame rate for special showings. You won’t hear many speaking highly about the characters or story and for good reason. They’re mere pale and tired placeholders for de...
October 12, 2019
No Punchline: Joker’s Nihilism Nosedive
The 2019 film Joker may appear like the most artful picture amid the tsunami of samey superhero films. It is by far the most divergent. There’s no hero that comes to save the day. The central villain is not made out to be an anti-hero. The tone is relentlessly bleak, dark and cruel. No fantastical elements. No villain scheme of taking over a city or planet. It is the tale of one man losing his mind in a grimy city and never recovers from the darkness.
From a surface level, Joker has a lot of...
“The Addams Family” (2019) Review
The Addams Family is a premise that seems as though it’d be perfect for animation. A comically creepy family living in a haunted house with all manner of monsters lurking about would be suited well for a medium where anything is possible. But when mired in the current framework of Universal’s formula for kid-targeted animation, the same bite of the live-action show and movies is just not present. For a family that was all about being different and weird, this latest iteration of The Addams Fa...
October 1, 2019
“Joker” Review
Given the competition, I could easily see someone praising the surface-level sophistication of something like Joker greatly distancing itself from the current crop of comic book films. There’s no quippy superhero to save the day, no routine villain scheme of taking over Gotham and no anti-hero bent where our antagonist centerpiece has to remind us he is the bad guy. It’s a bleak, depressing and horrific world of unrelenting cruelty. Many balls are juggled of questioning capitalism, the lack o...
September 28, 2019
“Ad Astra” Review
Trips to the stars often involve a lot of isolation and a sense of hopelessness when on a voyage into endless black. Trapped within spacecraft on long journeys, there’s time to contemplate and ask tougher questions within ourselves. Most sci-fi pictures always seem to get lost within the act of survival and saving humanity that we often lose sight of this internal conflict. This is not the case with Ad Astra, a space epic that never loses sight of its character and his personal struggles.
Maj...
September 15, 2019
“It: Chapter 2” Review
The final chapter of It comes to a close with a runtime close to that of Avengers: Endgame. But while that superhero ensemble was able to reap an extra bit of character and introspection amid its crowded cast of superhero action, this supernatural horror with less than half the cast delivers half the amount of emotion. So many events, themes, and scares are overstuffed into this film that rarely any of it is given breathing room. The Loser’s Club victory, in this regard, comes about less like...
July 26, 2019
“Once Upon a Time In Hollywood” Review
It’s pretty clear from Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue and homages from his many films that he’s a huge movie nerd, to say nothing of his many exciting chats about his favorite films. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is his ultimate tribute to his obsession with the medium. His film not only basks in the glow of the retro movie scene from 1969 but also humanizes it with an emotional twinge of the twilight of careers. We get to spend a lot of time in this era and with these characters that there’...
July 15, 2019
“The Lion King” (2019) Review
As the second Disney film directed by Jon Favreau to feature computer-generated animals, The Lion King plays things relatively safe with the perfected formula of the studio remaking their animated classics. Is there any deviation from the 1994 animated classic? Nope. Are the familiar songs all there? Yep. Does it surpass the original? Not a chance. Of course, this begs the question of what is the point in returning to this film with a remake. Sure, it’s little more than a prettier picture...
