curated cinema: the wit and wisdom of Maggie Smith (and her friends)
2018’s Tea with the Dames (aka Nothing Like a Dame) is on Kanopy in the US, BBC iPlayer in the UK.
Harry Potter
loaded question: what 2023 movie was the worst you saw?
For me, this was School of Magical Animals, a desperately terrible Harry Potter family-fantasy knockoff out of Germany…
What’s Love Got to Do with It? movie review: the boy next door, and a world away
Lily James and Shazad Latif? Delightful, even when they’re not together and sparking. No surprise where they’re going, but this amiable rom-com gets them there with genuine smarts and real sentiment.
loaded question: which celebrity would you cast as which current or historical figure in a biopic?
In honor of Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al Yankovic. Yes, this is happening.
Artemis Fowl movie review: falls foul of itself
A disaster of a kids’ fantasy caper; feels like it’s making up the plot as it goes. A mishmash of manufactured wonder: characters barely sketched, action seemingly setting up future DisneyWorld rides.
Scoob! movie review: Scooby dooby don’t
A spectacularly scattershot, pandering mess of pulp junk, cheap-looking animation, and poisonous gender dynamics. A charmless cash-grab that can’t be bothered with the slightest stab at originality.
Last Christmas movie review: give it your heart, get your heart stomped
Love and life are pain, the glitz and sparkle of Christmas are but a momentary reprieve from it, and everything is pretty much unrelentingly awful. But Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding are adorable!
A Dog’s Journey movie review: Does the Dog Die? The Movie
Pure rerun of A Dog’s Purpose: Pooch Bailey returns again and again (again) in different bodies to love and serve his humans. A sappy tail, pleasantly daydreamy. I’m not crying you’re crying.
Shazam! movie review: unmarvelous
Nothing matters in this literal adolescent-male power fantasy, a cheesy mishmash of nonsense and low stakes. Anyone who needs at least a bit of meat in their superhero tales will be disappointed.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald movie review: the crimes of this movie, though…
It certainly is MORE than the first movie: more incoherent, more confused about who its protagonist is, more crammed with contrivance and coincidence. Even the title is more nonsensical this time.
