Movies
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Gold
I had recently been reading Shashi Tharoor’s An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India when I came across the film Gold on Amazon Prime. The combination of timing and subject matter made it feel like required viewing.
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I first encountered the word “android” as a child, watching Blade Runner. The title of this post is the Philip K. Dick novel that served as the film’s source material. Both the book and its adaptations have aged...
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Logan and Wolverine
When the first X-Men film came out over seventeen years ago, Wolverine was not initially the central role. But over time he became the character the audience most wanted to see, defined by an undeniable bad-ass quality that Hugh Jackman...
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Moana the Movie and Climate Change
This Christmas I took my children to see Moana. One was thoroughly engaged; the other lost interest midway. It is family entertainment that works on multiple levels.
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Dr. Strange and the Case of Disabling Constructs
Dr. Strange is one of Marvel’s top-grossing single-hero films. Benedict Cumberbatch excels at playing roles with strong character — Dr. Strange both before and after his transformation gives him full range. This post is not a...
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D-Wars
D-Wars (Dragon Wars) is a South Korean monster film that made it to international screens on the strength of its visual effects budget and the universal appeal of giant creatures destroying city blocks. It is exactly what it looks like: an...
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Stardust
Stardust is a fairy tale for adults — based on Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s illustrated novel — and it is one of the more delightful films to come out of the fantasy genre in years. It does not take itself too...
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Juno
Juno is one of those films that should not work as well as it does. A teenage pregnancy comedy with a quirky indie sensibility, written by a former stripper, starring an actress then largely unknown — the components do not obviously...
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Enchanted — Recapturing Innocence Lost
Enchanted is a Disney film that requires a certain kind of surrender to enjoy. You have to be willing to let it work on you rather than watching it from a critical distance. If you are, it is genuinely delightful.
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Fire the Product Placement Guy
Product placement in films has a spectrum. At one end, it is seamless — the brand exists in the world of the film the way brands exist in the real world, noticed peripherally and unremarked upon. At the other end, it stops the film...