Reviews of the Bosch

There’s a scene early on in Top Gun: Maverick , like many a direct mirror to one in the original movie, in which an admiral played by Ed Harris chastises Tom Cruise’s Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell after a dangerous test flight and emphasizes that Maverick is a relic; that it won’t be long before the U.S. Military no longer needs pilots, soon to be replaced he predicts, by drones or computerized systems. “Your kind is headed for extinction” he says. “Maybe so, sir,” Maverick acknowledges. “But not today.” It seems to be a sly meta-comment on Cruise’s place within a Hollywood devoid of the star system in which he first arose in the 1980s, or this movies’ place in a blockbuster environment that is far more homogenized than in the days when Top Gun  could be one of the biggest hits of the decade. In any case it is an affirmation that the “relic”, whether a person or product, and though on its’ way out the door, still has some lustre left. That’s kind of the point of the whole movie,...

In case you missed its’ most recent iteration, there is a recurring discourse in the online film community lately about the ethics and purpose of sex scenes in movies -mostly coming from those especially younger and otherwise progressive voices who are discomforted by them and would rather they didn’t exist (ignoring of course that sexuality of any sort is all but completely absent from modern Hollywood filmmaking). It’s dumb and weird and unsettlingly puritanical, but it has been on my mind lately -which may be why I chose this movie to talk about this month. A movie that features sex scenes and frank sexuality, and may even be in conversation with this discourse. It is not intentionally out of spite. It may also be because The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent  reminded me of this movie and its’ extremely poetic title. The Unbearable Lightness of Being  is a 1988 film directed by Philip Kaufman based on Milan Kundera’s book about the lives of three bohemians in Czechoslova...

After seeing James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad  last year, I wasn’t terribly confident in the idea of a spin-off series dedicated to the Peacemaker character. There was cynicism in this of course -it was yet another example of shallow franchise expansion in the ever-dominant superhero genre market, and DC again seemingly riding Marvel’s coattails of issuing series exclusive to their streaming service about supporting characters in their film universe to further deepen the brand. But independent of this there was also just the fact that Peacemaker, as played by John Cena, was an asshole. And not just an asshole -a murderous militant and jingoistic proto-fascist who exits the film one of its’ most loathsome characters, in spite of his doofus charm and comical fragile masculinity. And this was the right choice for the film -his heel-turn in fact is where I really became engaged. But a whole show centred around the guy sounded nigh insufferable. There’s only so far the jokes about his rac...

Disney’s Chip and Dale have been around since 1943, the stars of dozens of shorts through the company’s Golden Age of animation, often cast as mischievous foils to Donald Duck or Pluto. And yet even to many Disney fans most of that history has been forgotten since the pair were rebooted as adventure heroes for basic cable television in the late 1980s. Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers  was one of the headline shows of what was called the Disney Afternoon, a programming block of Disney cartoons in the early 90s that have attained a cult reverence due to nostalgia (me personally, I was about a half-generation out from this -my equivalent was One Saturday Morning ). Indeed the Disney Afternoon was perhaps the company’s first real successful capitalization on nostalgia -and its’ interpretations of several classic characters have become their standard recognized forms, the whole cast of DuckTales  being another example. So there’s something poetic in  Chip ‘n Dale  resurfacing...

Men  may be a bit too on the nose. As a concept at least it’s extremely blunt: what if you took all of the danger, the power, the judgement, the misogyny in each of its’ forms that men can culturally represent towards women and made it a literal monster -the classic horror boogeyman but it’s just all men. It’s a big idea and seems like the ultimate conceit of the socially conscious horror film. But it also seems a bit too easy, like it’s not hard to vilify men and toxic male behaviour. However that’s what you typically bring in someone like Alex Garland for, to make it more clever, give some substance to the horror beyond stereotype, and maybe tap into a deeper unsettling truth. It’s what he did so brilliantly in Ex Machina , and what he pushes for here but not so comprehensively or to near the same effect. There are quite a few avenues in the horror of Men  that are thematically or ideologically shallow, as creepy as they may be in execution. And yet it also is reaching for s...

Death is on the mind through All My Puny Sorrows , Michael McGowan’s adaptation of the acclaimed Miriam Toews novel that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year. Death as ultimatum, death as release, and the wounds death leaves on the living. It’s not often discussed how suicide can perpetuate itself; that the very trauma of being close to it can evoke suicidal tendencies in others. When someone close cuts their life so short, the why and how may not matter as much as the hole left behind. This may be the case for Elfrieda “Elf” Von Riesen (Sarah Gadon), whose father stepped in front of a train when she was young; but that may also be presumptuous. The only certainty is that she craves death and her family wants her to live. All My Puny Sorrows  is a bleak movie, its’ characters locked in a seemingly endless cycle of depression and trauma -and yet it discusses death and suicide in refreshingly frank ways that cushions a sombre mood. It’s about two sisters who grew up in a ...

It makes sense that in the age of the superhero movie, someone would look to make a new version of Firestarter , seemingly the Stephen King novel that comes closest to being a superhero story (or supervillain story, however you may dice it). Of course, Firestarter  doesn’t fit neatly into the modern contours of the superhero genre, much as it may read as a standard origin tale for someone like the Human Torch -essentially who Charlie McGee, the girl at the centre of things with the telekinetic ability to create and manipulate fire, is comparable to. It’s much too concerned with ethics and government conspiracies and the fear rather than awe of supernatural abilities. Still, a version made today could work, and I noted watching this film -as someone who’s never read the book- what a strong story it is. Such a shame the movie around it is pretty awful. I don’t know what Blumhouse was thinking with this adaptation, one that feels particularly thin and dispassionate. It’s directed by K...