Sinners movie review: bootleg vampires
Wildly primal, big and bold, fueled by pain and rage, by community and family, throbbing with love and sex and joy, infused with magic. A sumptuously textured, unmissable howl of a passion project.
Star Wars
Madame Web movie review: absurdly tangled
A travesty of corporate cynicism. Its desperation to ride Spider-Man’s coattails is pathetic, but its convoluted, coincidence-laden nonsense is duller than you’d imagine: it’s not even so bad it’s fun.
loaded question: what are your memories of ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’ as we approach its 25th anniversary?
It’s almost impossible to convey the level of excitement and anticipation if you didn’t experience it that spring and summer of 1999…
The Creator movie review: meat versus metal
Looks great, but the plot falls apart if you poke it and makes no attempt to grapple with AI’s potential. Instead it renders its robot people as a racialized Other in a clunky metaphor for bigotry.
loaded question: what are the best (and worse) ways characters have unexpectedly reappeared in a story?
I have chosen the absolute nonsense of “Somehow, Palpatine returned,” which is so ridiculous that poor Oscar Isaac seems unable to muster enough enthusiasm to even pretend it makes sense…
loaded question: what’s a thing from movies (or books or TV) that you absolutely believed as a kid?
And do you still kinda sorta half believe it?
loaded question: is fandom out of control?
And perhaps more pertinently, if it is, how do we fix it?
Top Gun: Maverick movie review: we’re well into the danger zone
With its melancholy regret and bittersweet nostalgia, this is far superior to the 1986 blockbuster. But as the sun goes down on American imperialism here, the last-gasp celebration of it unsettles.
Dune movie review: dreams of alien worlds
Monumental. Villeneuve tells a familiar story with uncommon elegance and pensiveness, even dreaminess, on a breathtaking scale. A stunningly gorgeous, supremely dignified movie about ugly things.
curated: the boy who was almost Anakin Skywalker
Please watch this absolutely bittersweet and poignant short film about Devon Michael, a child star in the 1990s who was on the very shortlist to play Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace…
