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

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?

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

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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Balding celebrity chef makes mid-life crisis everyone’s problem in ‘The Menu’

Ralph Fiennes, the legend, crushes it, of course, though I can’t figure why they’re having him do an American accent. Images courtesy Searchlight Pictures – that’s right, kids, this horrible movie about the crazy chef who kills everybody is a Disney property!

2/10 The Menu is a terrible, boring film that exists only to clamber up its own ass and turn left. It’s about a crazy chef who murders everybody, and the mystery is his insane and torturously metaphorical reasons for murdering everybody being revealed over the course of the dinner. It’s wild, but completely arbitrary in a way that makes my interest vanish as it goes onward.

In The Menu, Tyler Ledford and Margot Mills (Nicholas Hoult and Anya Taylor-Joy) join a group of a dozen diners for an exclusive evening at Hawthorne, the restaurant on a private island belonging to reclusive celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). Slowik, a self-aggrandizing cunt, has arranged for a specific group of 12 customers and intends to murder all of them, but he’s thrown by the presence of Mills, who’s filling in for Ledford’s recent ex.

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‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ deservedly rakes in awards

Images courtesy Searchlight Pictures – that’s right kids, this extended allegory for the Irish Civil War where Brendan Gleeson cuts his own fingers off is a Disney property!

9/10 The Banshees of Inisherin is one of the top movies of the year, simple yet contemplative, expressive and emotionally razor sharp.

Inisherin among the Aran Islands on the east coast of Ireland, April 1, 1923- Local folk musician Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) begins abruptly ignoring his longtime drinking buddy, Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell). As the confused Súilleabháin tries to mend the friendship, over the course of a week and a half, tensions between the two wind to the point that Doherty threatens to begin cutting his fingers off in protest every time Súilleabháin speaks to him. Relationships in the tiny island town unravel as inhabitants begin to wonder whether or not they really like each other or the isle of Inisherin.

Banshees of Inisherin is the fourth feature film from playwright and director Martin McDonagh, who’s been putting them out every five years like clockwork. He’s one of the best dialogue writers and meta storytellers working today and appointment viewing for any cinephile. Perhaps only Quentin Tarantino is better suited to make a movie about smalltalk so irritating it fully ends a relationship, but his version would be a completely different movie. McDonagh has already hit mainstream success with his last film, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Inisherin collected screenplay and lead actor awards at Venice and three Golden Globes, including Best Picture in the comedy category, making it an Oscar frontrunner.

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