Asking the Wrong Questions

I didn't write any film criticism this summer, because it was a singularly uninteresting summer for blockbuster movies.  I skipped most of the big titles and kept my eyes out for any interesting counter-programming (of which there wasn't a lot).  Which is why this roundup starts with a leftover review from early July, of a film that I imagine most of you have already forgotten.  Otherwise, however, as summer has wound down and film festivals have wound up, some engaging selections have finally shown up at my local movie theaters.  I still don't think 2019 is going to shape up to be a great movie year (and certainly not for genre and blockbuster movies) but this bunch of films is satisfyingly eclectic, and mostly satisfying. Spider-Man: Far From Home - The second outing starring Tom Holland as the MCU's version of Peter Parker picks up eight months after the events of Avengers: Endgame , in a world reeling from the upheavals of the last five years, but still nowhe...

I haven't seen a lot of people take note of this--and what with everything else going on, that's hardly surprising--but 2017 is shaping up to be a really good movie year.  Specifically, the genre/action/adventure movies this year has served up have been genuinely strong and enjoyable, from envelope-pushing fare like Logan , Get Out , and Colossal , to well-made, thoughtful variations on familiar formulas like Wonder Woman .  (This is especially noticeable in comparison to 2016, which in terms of its movie offerings pretty much peaked with Deadpool .)  I didn't love all of the movies discussed in this post, but I enjoyed all of them, and more than that, I admired their attempts to do something different, even if in some cases those attempts didn't quite work for me.  In a movie scene that seems increasingly governed by formula and last year's successes, it's heartening to see so many idiosyncratic efforts, and hopefully their success bodes well for the future. ...

As I say at the beginning of my review of Korean director Bong Joon-Ho's first English-language film, if you're like me then the first thing you ever heard about Snowpiercer was that it was in danger of being chopped down and dumbed down by its distributors for the sake of English-speaking audiences.  And then you were probably incensed, not only because you're fully capable of watching a 125-minute film with a small amount of foreign language dialogue and a moderate gore, and not only because Snowpiercer is one of those rare SF films that is neither a sequel, a remake, or a reboot, but because it's been getting such good reviews abroad and you wanted to see it in all its original, uncut glory. As I write in my review in Strange Horizons , to go into Snowpiercer with all this in mind is probably to do the film a disservice, because what this knowledge does is take an interesting, well-done, but ultimately thoroughly conventional SF action film and turn into the va...