loaded question: what’s the best movie ever about magic?
Define magic however you like: could be supernatural magic, stage magic, or any other definition of the word you can defend.
Peter Jackson
Tolkien movie review: it doesn’t wander, but it’s lost
This infuriatingly reductive biopic of the Hobbit author renders him as stolid and dull, and removes all the mystery and the wonder from creative inspiration. Literal-minded and free of magic.
Mortal Engines movie review: it’s got no rev
Like the book it’s based on, the worldbuilding is intriguing, but the characters and story are strictly cliché. A lazy, confused, and derivative disaster, with plot points and visual and thematic motifs shamelessly stolen from far better movies.
They Shall Not Grow Old documentary review: more museum exhibit than movie (LFF 2018)
There’s a poignant eeriness to this modernization of WWI footage: we are looking into a past that feels touchably close and immediate like never before. But this is a novelty. A solemn one, but a novelty nonetheless.
The Happytime Murders movie review: schlock puppets
Ugly, sordid, and proud of it, with less than no justification. “Meet the Feebles meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit” conveys a far greater sense of dignity, cohesion, and purpose than this witness movie deserves.
Kong: Skull Island movie review: ape-ocalypse now
Boiled down to its bonkers essence, Skull Island is a Vietnam war movie with monsters, a retro analog vibe, and a dash of both Moby-Dick and The X-Files.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story movie review: the high price of hope
There’s genuine fun here, but the humor is cynical, the heroics are tinged with regret, and it’s all delivered with a cold smack of — yes — political relevance.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie review: reparo movens ad imaginem
Forget about magical creatures: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them could use some help finding itself, and in figuring out who its protagonist is.
Where Are the Women? The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Peter Jackson would have been better off, if he was worried about how women are represented on film, just leaving his Hobbit female-free. [This post is not behind the paywall.]
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies movie review: there and back again… at last
I fear that Peter Jackson has been suffering from a similar affliction to the dwarf king’s “dragon sickness”: a compulsive lust for epicness.
