The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: 2017
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If—and it's a big if—there's anything interesting about John Wick: Chapter Two as a sequel, it's how poorly the original filmmakers execute the sequel. It feels like a contractually obligated affair, only with the original principals returning. Well, save David Leitch who produced the first film and was the (uncredited) co-director. Guess we know who…
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Well-paced, emphasis on fun fun con movie with corrupt DA Yu Ji-tae and his team of blackmailed con artists trying to take down the perpetrator of the biggest Ponzi scheme in South Korean history. Everyone’s got their own agendas, their own secrets, which complicates the already arduous task. Especially newest team member Bin Hyun, who…
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Effective horror short takes a while to get going but it’s worth the wait. Classy production of a (slightly) exploitative story. Great support from Julian Seagar, excellent production design and music. None.Continue reading →
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Exceeding competently produced horror short features a fantastic, entirely expression-based performance from Gemma Whelan (as a home healthcare worker who starts a new assignment) but it’s very predictable, very pat. Streaming.Continue reading →
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Hard Surfaces is pretty thin. Sometimes it’s translucently thin. The film itself never has any depth, but fairly regularly the actors at least show they could give it some depth, if it weren’t for the thinness. Ostensibly the film’s well-meaning, but that quality comes off as fake. Like writer (and director) Brown is using trying…
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The Dark Tower is the story of unremarkable white kid Tom Taylor–wait, he’s supposed to be eleven? No way. Anyway, it’s the story of unremarkable white teenager Tom Taylor who discovers, no, his visions are real and he is a wizard and he’s going to travel to another dimension and bring a legendary hero back…
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Despite the rather declarative I in the title, I, Tonya, Margot Robbie’s Tonya Harding is not the protagonist of the film. Writer Steven Rogers avoids making her the protagonist as long as he can–really, until the third act–and instead splits it between Robbie and Sebastian Stan (as her husband). Allison Janney, as her mother, has…
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Voyeur has five shots. Maybe six… but I think five. The main shot is of star (and writer and producer) Stephanie Arapian’s front door. A little of the apartment interior is visible, but mostly in shade. Or, during the night shots, it’s just a lighted window. Over the film’s six minute run time, Voyeur explores…
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As Come Swim gets under way, the short provokes a couple thoughts. First, it’s not really going to be eighteen minutes, is it? Spoiler, not only is it eighteen minutes, it’s two separate short films stuck together with the first nine minutes or so being a dream sequence. Or is it a dream sequence? Oh,…
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I’m going to start by saying some positive things about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. It has fantastic CG. Wow is cinematographer Henry Braham truly inept at compositing it with live footage, but the CG is fantastic. Whether it’s the exploding spaceships or exploding planets or the genetically engineered, bipedal racoon, the CG is…
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The best thing about Fun Mom Dinner is the soundtrack. It’s all mainstream early-to-mid eighties hits–some Cars, 99 Luftballons, the song from the end of Sixteen Candles because a Jack Ryan crush is a major plot point (which is a little weird since it’s lead Katie Aselton was six when Sixteen Candles came out and…
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What’s particularly stunning about Get Out is how nimble director (and writer) Peele gets with the protagonist, Daniel Kaluuya, and the narrative distance to him. Peele’s very patient with his cuts. Lots of long shots, establishing what Kaluuya is seeing (as well as the audience); the audience has no point of view outside Kaluuya. Then…
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The most disconcerting thing about The Good Time Girls is the dialogue. The short opens with this solid, distinct narration from Laura Dern. Director (and writer) Hoffman goes for lyrical shots but not visuals; Autumn Durald’s photography isn’t dull so much as shallow… to the point you wonder if the filters were just set wrong…
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Barrier #5 finally translates Oscar’s dialogue. He and Liddy are both plugged into the aliens’ heads and, after Liddy’s flashback–revealing what had happened to her husband, though without dialogue–the aliens talk for a bit in Spanish then it’s Oscar’s flashback. With English dialogue. Given how important not translating Oscar’s dialogue has been the entire series,…
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The Last Jedi is a long two and a half hours. It’s an uneven split between Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, and John Boyega. Ridley’s off with Mark Hamill–but really having a FaceTime via the Force arc with Adam River–while Isaac is doing his damndest to get everyone killed because he doesn’t want to listen to…
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They get to talk again. The aliens dump them in a different area of the ship where there are other aliens and those aliens are mean. Barrier doesn’t refer to language barrier, does it? The issue delves into Oscar’s back story, undoubtedly much more if you can read Spanish, but there’s still some discernible information…
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The Florida Project turns out to be a lot about perspective. Director Baker establishes three different perspectives–six-year-old Brooklynn Prince, her mom (Bria Vinaite), and the manager of the motel where they live (William Dafoe). The film takes place over a summer, as Prince makes new friends and loses old ones. The kids have numerous adventures,…
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Loving Vincent is the story of the man in the yellow suit (not to be confused with the Man in the Yellow Hat, which is sort of unfortunate because monkey) and his quest to deliver Vincent Van Gogh’s last letter. The title comes from how Van Gogh signed letters to his brother–“your most loving brother.”…
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Even though Young doesn’t do arcs in Fairyland anymore, he sort of does. And this issue is the end of the arc–i.e. trade–with setup for the next one. It moves all right, but it’s nowhere near as funny as usual. Probably because Gert is being a good girl (not a spoiler, the trade’s out and…
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Sax Rohmer’s Dope was originally serialized in the Eclipse anthology magazine in the early eighties, which makes a lot of sense. It’s not paced for a single reading, not with the final “reveal” (which isn’t pertenant by that time) and the long blocks of exposition. The early eighties origin also makes the ickiness of the…
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Whatever its faults, Blade Runner 2049 is breathtaking. Director Villeneuve’s composition, Roger Deakins’s photography, Dennis Gassner’s production design, all the CGI–the film is constantly gorgeous. It’s got nothing beautiful to show–the world of 2049 is a wasteland, all plant life is dead, the endless L.A. skyline is (while awesome) nasty, San Diego is a huge,…
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Ennis’s gentle story continues. Robin, the British WWII flier, reflects on his life while flying missions in Italy. Italy’s just capitulated, the Allies have taken Rome, everything’s going fine. Except Robin doesn’t have anything else going on except the flying. His Italian pal, whose life is fairly destroyed, maintains a more positive outlook. He encourages…
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Why does Thor: Ragnarok open with Chris Hemsworth narrating only for him to stop once the title card sizzles? Literally, sizzles. Ragnarok is delightfully tongue-in-cheek and on-the-nose. Director Waititi refuses to take anything too seriously, which makes for an amusing two plus hours, but it doesn’t amount to much. If anything. When Hemsworth stops narrating–after…
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The first half of Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters is surprisingly good. The film sets the scene during the opening titles–giant monsters attack in 1999, followed later by unstoppable Godzilla, two different space aliens show up to help in exchange for residency on the planet. Godzilla kicks everybody’s butt, driving the last 4,000 people from…
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The Rhoald Marcellius art aside, I’m not sure there’s enough to Bonehead to stay conscious, much less engaged between issues. It is the future. Drones patrol the city. Boneheads are parkour-gangs, because in the future, every male under the age of thirty will have amazing coordination. The lead of Bonehead is “56.” He doesn’t have…
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Evolution reads like a novel. Or it doesn’t. Then it does again. Then it doesn’t. The comic makes the four different writes working on different things–presumably, I still haven’t read the back matter, but there are four different plot threads going. Anyway, sometimes there’s rhythm between the writers. Sometimes there’s none. This one time there’s…
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It’s a perfectly good issue of Redneck. It reads a little fast, but it’s a perfectly good comic. But, damn, do I not like the cliffhanger. Vampires or not, Cates finds a way to put the likable cast members–all two of them–in danger. That danger isn’t the problem. It’s the balls Cates has going in…
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St. Claire’s art is feeling a little hurried this issue, but it’s still solid. And Fu Jitsu is still awesome. Nitz does this thing with quotes this issue. Every page there’s a text box with a quote. All sorts of sources, sometimes figuratively dealing with the page’s events, sometimes literally. It makes for a fantastic…
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Coming to America collects six issues of New Super-Man. Three different two-parters. Coming to America is the middle one. No idea why they’d have picked it other than Eddie Murphy movie. It’s not the best of the two-parters. Might be the worst. Certainly does have the worst faces. Billy Tan pencils most of the issues,…
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I don’t know what I was expecting from Assassinistas. Beto Hernandez drawing a book about a team of eighties(?) female assassins, written by Tini Howard, who I’m unfamiliar with. It’s a Black Crown book from IDW, but I still wasn’t expecting the Black Crown Pub reference in it. There’s no pomp or pretense to having…
The Stop Button 