Reely understanding ‘John Wick’ and parallels with Roman mythology

Posted on May 27, 2019 by reelentropy

One of my favorite things about John Wick: Chapter 2, and one of the most illustrative ways in which John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum represents a slight step down, is how well it sews mythology into its narrative. Chapter 2, and by extension the original John Wick, is a hyper-stylized retelling of the Roman and Greek myth of Hercules, with Wick cast as the legendary hero.

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‘Aladdin’ is one of the worst movies I have ever seen

Posted on May 25, 2019 by reelentropy

Ahhh! Images courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

2/10 As Disney plumbs ever deeper into its vault of classic- and renaissance-era features to remake live — or, “live” — it will inevitably begin to withdraw properties that will take more effort to translate into live-action or that make less sense in this peculiar socio-political environment than they did 30 years ago. What is not inevitable, but what has certainly come to pass, is the studio will put less and less effort into these remakes even as they require more over time, opting less for re-imaginings and more for slightly dressier versions of the classic cartoons.

So while this decade started with movies like like Alice in Wonderland, the Tim Burton passion project that unexpectedly grossed $1 billion worldwide and made all of this necessary, Snow White and the Huntsman, which added a melancholy Gothicism to its source material, and Maleficent, which completely re-arranges its story, it is ending with uninspired, bitterly sardonic remakes like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast.

But Aladdin isn’t sardonic that way, it doesn’t carry that same thinly veiled hatred of its audience and itself. For the most part, it doesn’t carry any emotion at all.

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‘Parabellum’ step down for story, step up for franchise

Posted on May 21, 2019 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Summit Entertainment.

8/10 John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum is absolutely everything you’ve ever wanted out of an action movie. It is a pants-on-head insane celebration of stunts and choreography, an asylum of guns, knives, gothic noir landscapes, hounds of hell, classical literature, blood oaths, blood sacrifices, shattered glass, crimes, punishments and neon lights. It is a sendup of traditional filmmaking in which as much as possible is shot in-camera, a glorious carnival of everything that can be done with gleefully dismissive attitude toward the question of what should be done.

And that’s the first half hour of Parabellum. The rest is, I mean it’s not bad, it’s just different.

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Visually creative ‘Tolkien’ failed by fundamentally poor storytelling

Posted on May 16, 2019 by reelentropy

Tolkien is notable as the first Fox film distributed after the Disney acquisition. Images courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

3/10 With the rate at which boring, inaccurate and horrendously bad biopics win awards, Tolkien could easily have been a formulaic Oscar grab. Instead, the creative team has gone in a different, much more ambitious direction, trying to recreate the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s life through the eyes of someone who wrote like he did. The brave attempt is undermined by its basic storytelling failures.

Tolkien follows the title character (Nicholas Hoult and Harry Gilby) through the first 25 or so years of his life, focusing on a handful of relationships and locations that would directly inspire plot elements in his Lord of the Rings books.

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‘Detective Pikachu’ an adoring, vibrant journey into the Pokemon World

Posted on May 12, 2019 by reelentropy

It’s a photorealistic pikachu! And it’s fuzzy and it’s got a magnifying glass and a deerstalker cap! Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures!

9/10 So they’re finally making a live-action Pokemon movie. I guess that’s all right. Guess the real surprise is that it took this long. Honestly, I’ve only got one request – don’t do it halfway. Don’t make some movie-product meant to be advertised for more than it’s meant to be consumed. Just make it real.

They made it real.

In the Pokemon World, Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), who once aspired to become a champion trainer, never left his hometown. When his police detective father dies, Goodman is called to settle his affairs in Ryme City – a new metropolis where battling is outlawed and man and wild pokemon live side by side. In his father’s apartment, Goodman meets Detective Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds), a miraculous mouse who can speak English, but only to Goodman. The pikachu has no memory, but describes himself as a world-class detective and resolves to find Goodman’s father.

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