Reviews of the Bosch

There’s a certain whimsical suspension of disbelief missing from a lot of kids’ movies these days. Particularly in the American animation market, there’s a kind of self-aware cynicism they are imbued with, winking at the audience over their own concepts, tropes, and worlds. Even Disney and Pixar, who tend to blend it better than others, still lack earnestness in their endeavours to capture the voice of their viewers. And they’ll rarely dispense with logic for the sake of fantasy. There were several moments for me watching My Father’s Dragon  where I noted how an American studio would lampshade or over-explain its’ leaps of logic -never mind that the film is based on a children’s book- or write its’ heroes with more manufactured personalities. I and others have often in recent years compared Cartoon Saloon to Studio Ghibli for reasons precisely like this. It is detached from the mechanisms that drive the industry of animated cinema in Hollywood and feels purer as a result. Though it...

A lot of weight rested on this films’ shoulders. Following up Black Panther  is not just making another Marvel sequel, because  Black Panther  was not just any Marvel movie. It was a cultural phenomenon, a major moment for representation in the blockbuster industry, and a movie that is still among the MCU’s Top Five, one of the few that truly transcends their insular cinematic universe. The tragic death of Chadwick Boseman in 2020 threw a wrench in whatever initial plans director Ryan Coogler and the team at Marvel had for the continuing series. Suddenly, the sequel had to be completely different and in a way that conveyed sincere respect for its’ lost star -someone who had been more of a driving force behind  Black Panther  than he ever got credit for in his life. No one would envy Coogler that task, and under the circumstances it’s amazing he was able to pull something through that does in several respects feel like a worthy eulogy for Boseman and his T’Challa...

Like Steven Spielberg does through The Fabelmans , Armageddon Time  is a means for director James Gray to reckon with his childhood. Specifically it concentrates on the ways that familial and societal forces shaped his values growing up in an upper middle-class Jewish-American atmosphere in 1980s Queens. It is his realization of the injustices of the world, specifically racism, how he feels about that and what actions it leads him to take. The movie is set against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 Presidential campaign, just ahead of an era that would change U.S. politics forever. It’s an interesting time and an interesting perspective, told with a sense of nostalgia and a curiosity about probing one’s own understanding of the world. It is these things, and it is highly flawed for them, Gray’s film exploring a meaningful personal epiphany, but one that can’t help feel limiting in the details of its’ approach; an approach that boils down to a white kid learning about racism throu...

Mission: Impossible III was developed with David Fincher attached to direct, which would have been the second time he’s helmed the third part in an established franchise. The precedent of Alien 3 perhaps makes it fortuitous he chose to leave, and eventually it was Tom Cruise who picked his successor. Apparently he got really into the show Alias  and handpicked its’ creator J.J. Abrams to direct and re-write the film. In so doing, he set the stage for one of the most dominant figures, for better or worse, in the Hollywood industry for the coming decade and a half. But Cruise’s pick was bold at the time: Abrams had never directed a movie, least of all a big action blockbuster, though he did have plenty of well-received work on television to speak for him from Felicity , Alias , and Lost -the latter the most popular show on TV at the time. He brought over with him Alias  writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to hammer out a script, and the result is something about as pertinent ...

Music biopics are typically boring, and a straight one about Weird Al Yankovic would likely be the most boring.  Because Weird Al’s story as an artist is not at all turbulent or interesting. He was discovered as a teenager by the Dr. Demento radio show, began recording parodies of popular songs that took off, and eventually he kind of accidentally became a cultural icon for his music and image. He never was the subject of any scandals, got along well with everyone he’s worked with in the industry, and never sold out or compromised his style all that much. But the idea of Weird Al, with his goofy music and personal aesthetic, going down the dark road of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll is inherently hilarious. Funny or Die realized it when they made one of their best viral videos back in 2010: a faux trailer for “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”, which imagined such a formula rockstar biopic about Weird Al, featuring Aaron Paul in the title role and including such things as an illicit aff...

Back in September, one of the great world cinema titans died at age ninety-one, and I’ve been meaning to put out something in recognition of that. Whatever you made of him or his movies, Jean-Luc Godard was undeniably one of the most important filmmakers. At the forefront of the French New Wave, arguably the most consequential movement in cinema history, nobody more defined ‘the radical artist’ than this French socialist obsessed with breaking down the rules of cinema, redefining its’ limitations before experimenting beyond those. He is one of only a few classic European filmmakers (another being Bergman) who is so ubiquitous as to be the source of shorthand. Anyone wishing to emulate for parody or otherwise the “pretentious art film”, they’ll usually look to Godard (and specifically Breathless ) for influence. But while he was certainly an auteur with defined tendencies and themes -some of which are indeed quite difficult and alienating for their intellectual obtuseness- his work was ...

John Woo is a VERY different director than Brian De Palma. In fact you might call him a polar opposite in style. Before he retreated from Hollywood in the mid-2000s he was known for being extremely what the kids today would call “extra”. Every shot of his was so polished, every colour so vivid, every stylistic flourish so big -his action scenes designed with an eye for what looks cool above all else; his camera almost never stops, his use of slow-motion matched in excess only by his sped-up transitions and particular insistence on the aesthetic necessity of doves in his action climaxes. Mission: Impossible 2 is maybe the pinnacle of John Woo’s artistic singularity, at least as far as his Hollywood career goes, and for that reason it might have the distinction of being simultaneously the most memorable and most forgettable movie of this series. Mission: Impossible 2  has several visuals and stylized characteristics that will never leave you, whether you’ve seen the movie or not (I c...