Adventure Films
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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (PG-13)
An early scene in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a fitting metaphor for the film as a whole. Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac), fleeing TIE Fighters in the Millennium Falcon, escape their pursuers by “lightspeed skipping” – a dangerous maneuver (or so we’re told, though it goes smoothly enough for our […]
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Ad Astra (PG-13)
Ad Astra is a story of fathers and sons. It is about the way men are out of touch with their feelings because kindness and intimacy were never modeled for them. It is about confronting the emptiness of space and reckoning with our place within the universe. It is exactly the film I feared it […]
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Godzilla: King of the Monsters (PG-13)
In interviews, director/cowriter Michael Dougherty has called his Godzilla: King of the Monsters “the Aliens to [the 2014 Godzilla]’s Alien.” The comparison is an apt one. Alien, directed by Ridley Scott in 1979, was a moody, slow-burning horror film, prizing dread and atmosphere over character or plot. Its 1986 sequel, James Cameron’s Aliens, shifted gears […]
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Godzilla (2014) (PG-13)
When was the last time you saw a big-budget movie that was remarkable for its craftsmanship? The blockbusters that swarm cinemas every summer often invoke the name of Steven Spielberg, but precious few modern summer movies approximate the skill and patience of his original, 1975’s Jaws, the one that (together with Star Wars in 1977) […]
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Avengers: Endgame (PG-13)
One of the many, many things the Marvel Cinematic Universe has severely lacked is a sense of poetry — visually, verbally, thematically, or otherwise. But what strikes me about Avengers: Endgame is that it is a small but significant step toward reversing that trend. The film contains a surprising number of poetic touches and grace […]
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Pokémon Detective Pikachu (PG)
In my review for 2019’s criminally underrated The Kid Who Would Be King (still not a fan of that title), I lamented the dearth of classic family adventures like the ones Joe Johnston was so good at directing during the 1990s. What I’d neglected to remember was that we’d actually gotten a fairly good and fairly […]
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Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (PG-13)
I have a strange history with the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. When the first film came out in the summer of 2014, I was completely taken in by it and willfully ignored the friends who told me it was bad – until I watched it one time too many and veritable scales fell from my […]
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Iron Man Three (PG-13)
As the fishes above attest, this is not going to be a grand apology for an overlooked masterpiece. I am merely offering a few modest words on a film’s modest merits. In the rush of Marvel movies released since its premiere in 2013, Shane Black’s Iron Man Three has largely been forgotten – a victim […]
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The Kid Who Would be King (PG)
The inexplicably long-titled The Kid Who Would be King (was there no easier alternative?) opened at the end of January this year without any fanfare from 20th Century Fox. It’s no surprise that the film sunk like a stone at the box office. The marketing campaign just wasn’t appealing, there’ve been countless films about Arthurian legend, and, worst […]
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Captain Marvel (PG-13)
Somewhere in Captain Marvel, the heroine (Brie Larson) sits down to chat with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Earth has been invaded by shapeshifting aliens, and to prove he isn’t one, Fury rattles off a string of backstory details and character quirks. He then asks the good Captain to do the same, but instead of […]
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Sorcerer (R)
There are two extremes when it comes to film criticism: Romance and Reason. Those of a leftist temperament almost always veer too far into emotional fancy; those of the right tend to get bogged down with intellectual analysis. The truth is that film, like most forms of media, is a rough and ready mixture of […]
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Aquaman (PG-13)
When FilmFisher’s managing editor Timothy Lawrence asked me to review Aquaman, I groaned. I had only seen one DC film since Man of Steel (which I loathe), and that was the Marvel-esque Wonder Woman. I have heard tales of how Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad, and Justice League are incredibly awful. Therefore I was not […]
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (PG)
I love Spider-Man. To be more specific, I love Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. That isn’t to say I don’t love any other iteration of the character but it is the standard with which I judge all other iterations. Perhaps it isn’t the most objective, and it certainly isn’t the most ideal. While I think it is the […]
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Bumblebee (PG-13)
To watch Bumblebee is to be caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between two different movies. One is a forgettable blockbuster and wannabe franchise reboot about toys from the 1980s, and the other is an efficient if not novel throwback to children’s adventure films of that decade like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In the end, […]
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (PG)
Half-Blood Prince is the first, and perhaps only, Harry Potter film to feel like it isn’t trying to be a good “Harry Potter film” and just does its best at being a good film. The seventh film has a similar tone, and Azkaban encapsulates what it is to be a Harry Potter film the best, but my point stands. In the sixth cinematic installment of the franchise, Harry Potter and his friends are ordinary British teens placed in extraordinary circumstances, but instead of focusing on the circumstances, the film chooses to focus on the teens – and is much better off because of it.
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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PG)
In the evangelical circles of my childhood, Harry Potter was anathema; when I was allowed to read the books in high school, they still carried the sense of something forbidden about them, though by the time I reached college, J.K. Rowling was suddenly accorded the reverence due a long-lost member of the Inklings. Suffice it […]
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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (PG-13)
Do not go to see this film. Let me qualify: do not spend money seeing Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom unless your desire is to make two hours and ten minutes of your life feel more like four or five. It is a perfect proving ground for testing the relative perception of the passing of time. […]
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Solo: A Star Wars Story (PG-13)
By all accounts, Solo: A Star Wars Story is the post-Lucas Star Wars movie that should feel most like a corporate product. In a bizarre paradox, it may actually be the one that feels most human. The other post-Lucas films have been intriguing but haphazard; that Solo possesses a simple sort of dramatic competency should […]
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Star Wars: The Last Jedi – An Explication (PG-13)
Although I have waited till now to publish any written thoughts on the film, it is fairly common knowledge in various circles of the internet that I do not much care for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The number of fishes above might also indicate this, though I have found it difficult to settle on a rating for the film, because my thoughts and feelings on it are mixed – conflicted, one might say.
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Avengers: Infinity War (PG-13)
Avengers: Infinity War is as middle-of-the-road between better and lesser MCU films as I am middle-of-the-road between the two camps of reviewers. The MCU’s greatest weaknesses are on full display here, and while Infinity War doesn’t always play to the MCU’s greatest strengths, it does keep my hope alive that those strengths do exist. Infinity War is not a game-changer. It could have been, should have been, and almost was, but it’s more of the same—only it’s more of the same to the power of more of the same.