Tag: Animated

Movie Review: SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE – fantastic animation and art design + a smart script + well defined characters = best Spider Man movie yet

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If you’ve been following my reviews, you know I trend toward genre movies, and as someone who has written for Marvel Comics, I’m predisposed to seek out superhero movies, even if I don’t think they’ll be that great.  Hey, I’m a nerd, what can I say?  I don’t remember hearing about Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse until about a month before it dropped – the fourth quarter of 2018 was a busy one for me – and at that time I hadn’t seen Venom, so I missed out on the post-credits preview too, but I finally saw it just after Christmas, and I have to say it’s my favourite Spider-Man movie to date.

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Move Review: INCREDIBLES 2 – the Parrs are back after 14 years, but the overabundance of superhero movies makes it seem all-too familiar.

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14 years is a long time to wait for a sequel, especially for such a beloved movie as The Incredibles, but when you think about it, the pressure to deliver a worthy sequel isn’t of the same variety as the normal two-year gap between franchise installments where everything is still pretty fresh in the old Gulliver.  Only a few 18 year-olds would remember seeing this in the cinema if they ever saw it at all, and for those that did, the passing of time likely watered down the enthusiasm.  I speak mostly of the feelings I had when I first heard of the sequel: about time, and it better be good.  I enjoyed the first movie a lot, but it didn’t achieve greatness for me – this one didn’t either.

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Movie Review: ISLE OF DOGS – Charming, funny, and typical of Anderson’s style, but I’m not exactly sure who it’s meant for.

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I have a love/hate relationship with Wes Anderson’s movies.  On the plus side, I’m a huge fan of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, and I enjoyed Moonrise Kingdom, but I flat out hated (and couldn’t finish) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.  This kind of black and white reaction to his movies hasn’t made him a must-see filmmaker for me, and it’s why I haven’t gone through his catalogue with the same kind of enthusiasm I have for directors such as David Fincher.  When you add to that the fact that I’m not a fan of animated features either, I avoided The Fantastic Mr. Fox.  Why, then, did I bother with Isle of Dogs, his latest?  Mostly, I wanted to see what the controversy was all about.

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Movie Review: KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS – beautiful animated feature with great voicework and an ending that satisfies.

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My negative comments about the animated Batman: The Killing Joke and Justice League Dark were definitely affected by my lack of love for animation, but mostly because the animation was ugly, and the stories weak.  My comments on the animated stories within A Monster Calls were positively glowing, so I guess it isn’t animation overall I don’t get into, though that’s my biggest complaint.  Another complaint is that I don’t feel that animated stuff is much more than fanservice once it goes beyond the child demographic.

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Movie Review: HOWARD LOVECRAFT AND THE FROZEN KINGDOM falls short of appealing to anyone.

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howardlovecraft_poster

I’m a self-proclaimed disciple of H.P. Lovecraft, I have to say.  Ever since my English teacher introduced me to The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward when I was around 12, I’ve been a fan.  His work is a huge influence on my own writing, even though I’ve never written anything that remotely resembles his work.  I also feel somewhat protective of his writing and his concepts, which most notably include the “Cthulhu Mythos”.  I tend to feel aggrieved when I see how his most famous creation has become assimilated into mass-produced pop culture – Cthulhu plushies and the like (but I think Lovecraft would have secretly loved all of this) – and the name Cthulhu tossed around by people who have most never read a word of Lovecraft’s work.  Even those who have read Lovecraft and create works influenced by him, can barely get past the pastiche-homage of tentacled monsters in dark New England towns.  No, to honour Lovecraft is not rip him off, it’s to understand the context of his work and having done that, create new works of your own that don’t slavishly follow a Cthulhu gameplan.  This explains why I watched Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom.

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