Spielberg on Spielberg in autobiography only he could make

Posted on February 27, 2023 by reelentropy
Spielberg’s first-hand memories of the technology he was using add another layer of authenticity, and it’s a lot like the rest of the film – there’s factual accuracy, but what’s more important is the realization of this tactile memory. Images courtesy Universal Pictures.

8/10 My first movie was Jurassic Park, the unimpeachable knockout that single-handedly changed the course of American culture and cinematic history by being so terrific. As I sit down for The Fabelmans and gather my cynicism for the tail end of the legendary filmmaker’s career, unjustified as I know he hasn’t lost his touch, I wonder – would I be sitting here if it weren’t for Steven Spielberg?

Jan. 10, 1952, Haddon Township, New Jersey- Mitzi and Burt Fabelman (Michelle Williams and Paul Dano) take their son, Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle and Mateo Zoryon Francis-Deford) to his first movie, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth. Enraptured, Sammy Fabelman immediately becomes a camera and film junkie, spending his childhood and teenage years filming everything he can and diving head-first into ingenious, cheap special effects artistry. Through this lens, he documents his family’s move to Arizona and then California, his parents’ divorce and his high school experience.

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Gayness, cannibalism, ‘Bones and All’

Posted on February 27, 2023 by reelentropy
Images courtesy United Artists Releasing.

8/10 I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that the team behind Suspiria is following it up with something described as “the cannibalism movie.”

1988- In Bones and All, an epic romantic cannibal road movie, Maren Yearly (Taylor Russell) is thrown out by her father because her compulsions to eat other people have become too frequent for him to cope with. Yearly drifts on what unfolds into an epic, life-long journey across the U.S., meeting others like her, delving into her own past and learning how to exist in the world.

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‘Strange World’ is the runoff of the bratty, baiting sludge of modern Disney

Posted on February 27, 2023 by reelentropy
Didn’t animation used to be really pretty? Like, not that long ago? Images courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

2/10 From Walt Disney Animation Studios, the classic original Disney studio that’s brought you such recent titles as Frozen and Zootopia, comes a brand new adventure, Strange World! Strange World is set in a strange world, where strange things happen. Nobody knows what’s going on, it’s just kind of a strange place. That title really captures it all, doesn’t it? It’s just called Strange World!

In Strange World, legendary explorer Jaeger Clade and his son, Searcher (Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal), fall out as they try to penetrate the impassable wall of mountains surrounding their homeland, Avalonia, for the first time – Jaeger wants to push forward, but Searcher wants to turn back with a strange green plant they found that gives off electricity. Twenty-five years later, Searcher’s discovery, Pando, has revolutionized Avalonia’s economy and technology, and he is a wealthy farmer of the crop, but suddenly, the little bulbs begin to lose their power. Aboard the Venture, Searcher and a government team journey into a sinkhole at the shared root of the Pando plants and discover a strange world underneath their own.

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How come I don’t get to see any of those 3D Na’vi titties?

Posted on February 10, 2023 by reelentropy
Avatar images courtesy 20th Century Films.

That’s a wrap on 2022 cinema. Oscar nominations are out, and the associated limited releases have mostly wound their way through theaters. I’m still months behind schedule, but who cares. This year’s Christmas smash hit, Avatar: The Way of Water, was finally fallen to no. 3 after seven weekends at the top of the box office, and the daunting questions surrounding its profitability have been answered. The release finally got me to watch the original, and I’ve already splorted out more than 4,000 words on the two of them.

There’s just one sticky question stopping me from turning the page, and it’s a weird question, and I feel weird asking it, but it won’t go away, and the question is this:

How come I don’t get to see any of those 3D Na’vi titties?

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‘She Said’ dances on the corpse of systemic sexual predation, which is alive and well

Posted on January 13, 2023 by reelentropy
Kazan and Mulligan try their hardest, but can’t always energize into their weakly written characters. Images courtesy Universal Pictures.

2/10 As a journalist and someone who followed the Weinstein revelations closely, She Said is an absolutely infuriating film to watch. It feels like pulling teeth trying to get this to turn into a real journalism movie about the discovery of information or, more importantly, an honest look at the ongoing struggle kicked off by the Weinstein story.

On Oct. 5, 2017, The New York Times published a bombshell investigation into high-profile Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein detailing allegations of sexual misconduct and hush-money payoffs that stretched back decades. The explosion rippled across the internet, kicking off the #metoo movement and a global reckoning with sexual assault and the treatment of women as objects, demolishing The Weinstein Company and eventually triggering prosecution against Weinstein that resulted in a 23-year prison sentence. In 2019, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the reporters who wrote and won Pulitzer Prizes for the investigation, published “She Said,” a book detailing how they organized the evidence against Weinstein and convinced women to speak to them on the record. The movie rights were sold before the book was printed, and by 2022, Annapurna Pictures and Plan B Entertainment have squeezed out She Said, starring Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan as Kantor and Twohey.

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