Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets review

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is often seen as one of the weakest in the series, due to similarities to the first film and a storyline that doesn't have a lot of relevance to the series overall arc. And they're kinda right. Why then is it one of my favourite Harry Potter movies?

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Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....

Disney's Mulan, Cultural Appropriation, and Exploitation

I’m late on this one I know. I wasn’t willing to spend thirty bucks back in September for a movie experience I knew was going to be far poorer than if I had paid half that at a theatre. So I waited for it to hit streaming for free to give it a shot. In the meantime I heard that it wasn’t very good, but I remained determined not to skip it entirely, partly out of sympathy for director Niki Caro and partly out of morbid curiosity. Disney’s live-action Mulan I was actually mildly looking forward to early in the year in spite of my well-documented distaste for this series of creative dead zones by the most powerful media conglomerate on earth. Mulan was never one of Disney’s classics, a movie extremely of its time in its “girl power” gender politics and with a decidedly American take on ancient Chinese mythology. It got by on a couple good songs and a strong lead, but it was a movie that could be improved upon, and this new version looked like it had the potential to do that, em...

The Subtle Sensitivity of the Cinema of Wong Kar-wai

When I think of Wong Kar-wai, I think of nighttime and neon lights, I think of the image of lonely people sitting in cafes or bars as the world passes behind them, mere flashes of movement; I think of love and quiet, sombre heartbreak, the sensuality that exists between people but is rarely fully or openly expressed. Mostly I think of the mood of melancholy, yet how this can be beautiful, colourful, inspiring even. A feeling of gloominess at the complexity of messy human relationships, though tinged with an unmitigated joy in the sensation of that feeling. And a warmth, generated by light and colour, that cuts through to the solitude of our very soul. This isn’t a broadly definitive quality of Wong’s body of work -certainly it isn’t so much true of his martial arts films Ashes of Time and The Grandmaster. But those most affectionate movies on my memory: Chungking Express , Fallen Angels , Happy Together , 2046 , of course In the Mood for Love , and even My Blueberry Nig...

Reviews of the Bosch

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