Asking the Wrong Questions

Owen (Ian Foreman) is a lonely, withdrawn tween in an anonymous American suburb in the mid-90s. A chance encounter with older girl Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) introduces Owen to the long-running supernatural adventure series The Pink Opaque , in which teens Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan) use their psychic connection to battle monsters dispatched by the evil Mr. Melancholy. Supplied with past episodes on VHS tapes by Maddy, Owen quickly becomes entranced by the show's tangled mythology, evocative fusion of fantastical and everyday elements, and the close bond between its heroines. But as Maddy becomes more invested in the show, her dissatisfaction with her real life grows, and she eventually disappears. Years later, Owen (now played by Justice Smith) is shocked when Maddy returns, insisting that she has realized their world isn't real. She and Owen, she claims, are Tara and Isabel, who have been captured by Mr. Melancholy, dosed with poison, and buried alive. ...

The first thing that must be said about this movie is that it should not work. It's a prequel to one of the most mind-blowing, groundbreaking, and just plain revolutionary action movies of the 21st century—and prequels are a bad idea in most cases, but all the more so when the character they revolve around has already given you their entire backstory in their original introduction, which is also the final, culminating act of their character arc. (To put it another way, if you had asked me, nine years ago, which character I thought offered more fertile ground for prequel storytelling, Imperator Furiosa or Han Solo, I would have picked Han without a moment's hesitation, and I don't even like Han that much.) And it's a follow-up to a movie whose chief virtue lies in its conciseness—in being a single, drawn-out, pulse-pounding, increasingly deranged car chase. Which means you can either try to repeat that accomplishment, which will inevitably feel a bit old hat; or you can ...

[This post first appeared on Lawyers, Guns & Money, April 26, 2024 ] I have an embarrassing reading habit to confess. A book can sit in my TBR for months, years, decades even, but the thing that will finally persuade me to read it will be the news of a forthcoming film or television adaptation. In the case of Patricia Highsmith's classic novel of psychological suspense and identity theft, The Talented Mr. Ripley , I have somehow outdone myself. I first heard about the book in my teens, when it was adapted to the screen by Anthony Minghella. And so, with every honorable intention of reading the book before watching the movie, I somehow set both aside for a quarter century. It was only this year, when the news broke that Steve Zaillian would be producing a prestige miniseries adaptation of the novel for Netflix, that I finally kept my promise. As is often the case with such extreme procrastination, once the mental block that kept me from picking up The Talented Mr. Ripley was br...

Well, hot damn. I actually wasn't keen on the idea of a sequel to 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse . The first film was so remarkable, so brilliant on so many different levels, that it seemed impossible for its achievement to be reproduced. I wasn't eager to watch it transformed, like so many other exceptional pop culture events, into fodder for endless sequels and imitations—especially since the latter happened almost immediately, with Hollywood instantly embracing the film's most notable innovations, its deliberately skewed, not-entirely-realistic animation style, and the idea of the multiverse, both of which have become almost ubiquitous in a mere five years. A Spider-Verse sequel, I thought, couldn't help but feel like it was playing catch-up with the film's own imitators. So I guess that's me told, then, because Across the Spider-Verse is simply stunning. It's not just a step forward from the original film in practically every respect, but...

Twelve years ago, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard released The Cabin in the Woods , a metafictional horror comedy seeking to answer the question of just why photogenic young people on idyllic nature getaways keep encountering eldritch horrors who pick them off one by one. There's a lot in the film that hasn't aged well—the meta gags were getting tired almost as soon as they were made, and more recent work, such as the films of Jordan Peele, has done a much better job of blending horror and humor and exploring the roots of the genre's core tropes. But the basic idea of the film—a shadowy organization who are deliberately sacrificing the vacationers in order to spare humanity from the wrath of the old ones—remains strong, arguably stronger than the comedic wrapping that surrounds it. As I wrote in my review , by the end of the movie you find yourself regretting the time spent leading up to this revelation, and wishing the film had started from it as its premise. M. Night Shyamal...

There's something about filmmaking that lends itself very easily to cooking metaphors. Cooking and filmmaking are, after all, very similar. They're both the act of combining many different ingredients—some with chains of supply and production that stretch far beyond any one artist's ability to influence or even perceive—into a whole that should, if successful, feel entirely of a single piece. They're both the work of many pairs of hands that ends up being ascribed to a single mastermind—whose role, in reality, is often more in the realm of administration and logistics than artistry. And they both produce a range of results that can suit different palates at different times. An unassuming dish made with care and precision. A challenging, avant-garde experiment. A dazzling bit of cleverness. A junk orgy, full of fat and carbs, that leaves you entirely satisfied but with a looming stomachache. Or, you know, maybe that's just nonsense. Shortly into The Menu , Mark Mylod...

In interviews and promotional materials for his third movie, Nope , writer-director Jordan Peele has explained that the watchword for this project was "spectacle". After two years of pandemic-mandated movie theater closures, and filmmakers' growing fears that audiences would get used to the convenience (and safety) of streaming and give up on the cinematic experience, Peele's goal was to make a counter-argument. To create an experience as much as a story. On one level, it can't be denied that he has succeeded. Nope is chock-full of vivid and memorable imagery, cannily uses cinematic devices to evoke everything from dread to delight, and, in its last hour, delivers thrilling, pulse-pounding action. But this is still a Jordan Peele movie, which means that there's a barb hidden in all that celebration. For all that it is dedicated to spectacle, Nope is simultaneously engaged in analyzing what a desire for spectacle says about us, and about the people who produc...

Last week I wrote about the dubious pleasure of reading or watching something so hilariously terrible, you have to tell everyone about it. Most bad things aren't like that, though. Usually, when a book or movie or TV show are bad, they're bad in a boring, depressing way that makes you sad for all the energy expended on them. Such is the case with Netflix's film adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion , directed by Carrie Cracknell and with a screenplay by Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow. When the trailer for the film dropped last month, full of pratfalls and fourth-wall-breaking asides to the camera, Austen fans reared back in dismay. Why take Austen's saddest, most mature novel and reimagine it as a Fleabag -esque comedy in which the heroine muses, of the man who got away, "we're worse than exes; we're friends"? The film itself, however, is hardly worthy of all that outrage. It's bad, but doesn't even have the decency to be interestin...