What can you say about ‘Baywatch?’

Posted on May 26, 2017 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Paramount Pictures.

4/10 I really don’t know what to make of this movie. Can’t say it’s everything wrong with 2017 filmmaking, already did that last week. Can’t really say it’s juvenile, that’s the whole point.

On Emerald Bay, the renowned lifeguard team Baywatch holds grueling tryouts for new members every summer. Two-time Olympic gold medalist Matt Brody (Zac Efron), skilled swimmer Summer Quinn (Alexandria Daddario) and some guy named Ronnie (Josh Gad) —

Wait, that isn’t Josh Gad? Jon Bass? Who the hell is Jon Bass? This guy doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page.

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40 years of ‘Star Wars’

Posted on May 25, 2017 by reelentropy

Image courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Forty years ago today, 20th Century Fox dropped Star Wars off into the 32 theaters they could convince to screen it.

It was a Wednesday. The studio was worried the movie would be swallowed by other summer releases, so they pushed it back to Memorial Day weekend and gave it some room to breathe with a mid-week release, a tactic still common with movies a studio doesn’t expect to do well. Theaters didn’t even want it — Fox had to threaten to withhold Charles Jarrott’s The Other Side of Midnight, their most anticipated film of the summer, to get just those theaters. Some executives had an inkling that they had a hit on their hands, but no one really understood what was about to happen.

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The Möbius strip: ‘Alien’ barely edges ‘Guardians,’ Cannes clashes over Netflix

Posted on May 24, 2017 by reelentropy

Images courtesy 20th Century Fox.

New offering Alien: Covenant slightly underperformed and week-three holdover Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 had another strong showing, to the end that Covenant earned the weekend’s top spot by just a $1.5 million margin. Teenage romance adaptation Everything, Everything was the only other movie to earn more than $10 million- Box Office Mojo

Decoding what “franchise fatigue” really means — “boring movies-” WIRED

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‘Alien: Covenant’ is everything wrong with filmmaking in 2017

Posted on May 19, 2017 by reelentropy

Images courtesy 20th Century Fox.

5/10 Watching Alien: Covenant, it’s hard not to think about the death of cinema, as director/producer Ridley Scott recently described with a remarkable lack of self-awareness. Like the edema, back pain and noxious bad breath of advanced renal failure, the telling symptoms of this process are all present here.

In 2104, the “Covenant” carries more than 2,000 colonists to the distant Origae-6. A poorly timed solar flare blasts the ship seven years out from its destination, triggering emergency wakeup procedures for the 15-man crew. While making repairs, they discover a signal coming from a planet just three weeks away from their current location, one perfect for colonization that everyone had bizarrely missed while looking for new homeworlds. They detour to investigate, and discover the apocalyptic Doctor Moreau freakshow that is the aftermath of Prometheus.

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‘Prometheus:’ five years later, still shitty

Posted on May 18, 2017 by reelentropy

Images courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Prometheus is probably the most famously bad movie in recent memory.

Well, no, there are a lot of people who would pretty condescendingly disagree with that. Maybe it’s the most often defended bad movie in recent memory?

The worst good movie in recent memory. Yeah, that’ll do. Prometheus is by far the worst good movie of the past several years.

On the eve of the film’s followup, it’s time to break down some of the arguments in its favor and why they don’t hold up to scrutiny.

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