adventure
I love Joe Wright and while I was not overly interested in yet another version of the Peter Pan story, I was excited to see him take on Pan. But the very fact that it spent many more years in production than it probably should have, and the idea of Wright as a CGI movie director did make me uneasy. It turns out that I was right to feel that way, because while it must have been difficult to reinvigorate the Peter Pan story, the problematic production of Pan meant that this version of the story was always going to be something of a bust.
Remember when 3D movies dominated our cinematic landscape? No, not the 1980’s, where blurry red and blue glasses gave way to gimmicky horror films such as Jaws 3D and Amityville 3D. I’m also not talking about the early 2000’s, where 3D was turned over to children’s films, producing flops like Spy Kids 3 and The Polar Express.
Bill is the first feature film from the comedy team behind Horrible Histories, a TV show which I have just this year become a huge fan of. For those of you not familiar with it, Horrible Histories is in theory a kid’s history show based on the books of Terry Deary. But what it actually is, is an incredibly funny and informative sketch show that appeals to adults and children alike.
Some of the very best films are those that are immersive experiences. You immediately know after leaving the theater that you have witnessed something special, and for anyone to even suggest otherwise just seems inarguably wrong. The Martian is one of the few films that I have seen this year that has left such an impact.
A young Montana boy named T.S. Spivet leaves his rustic home and heads to Washington D.
A few years ago, I heard about two films going in to production, both on the subject of Mount Everest. The biopic of Mallory fell by the wayside and is still languishing in pre-production. However, the other soared, for about a moment.
One problem with modern society at the moment seems to be an obsession with nostalgia, which is being milked by marketing companies. This has bled into the hipster movement and has lead to the larger debate of analogue vs digital as digital technologies develop. It is now bleeding into every aspect of pop culture, and it is one which can be seen in film.
Even though he’s often stereotyped as solely a director of inferior British gangster films, based on his first two releases Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, Guy Ritchie is actually more of an experimental director than you may initially realise. Even though his early films were successful and enjoyable guilty pleasures, Ritchie had something of an insatiable need to be taken seriously, looking towards the European arthouse for inspiration. His third feature Swept Away, starring his then wife Madonna, was a remake of a satirical 1974 Italian film not widely known to international audiences.
Fantastic Four is a film that people wanted to hate from the start. First, there was the controversial casting of Michael B. Jordan as the traditionally white character Johnny Storm; shortly following this was the discovery that Victor Von Doom was a computer hacker instead of a brilliant inventor; finally, there was the casting itself, which involved younger characters just finishing high school, whereas most adaptations of the story present the Fantastic Four as adults.
Two decades after the original Jurassic Park became the most successful film of all time at that point and ushered in the era of CGI, the blockbuster cinema landscape is very different. With Marvel Cinematic Universe, franchises six or seven sequels deep, and young-adult dystopias dominating the big releases more and more every year, original screenplays or adaptations of adult-oriented novels are struggling to make an impact – it is inconceivable that Steven Spielberg’s classic could have been released today with anything near the same level of success as in 1993. And so while the original film has a devoted fan base, few would have thought there was that much demand for a new Jurassic Park film, especially after its two increasingly inferior sequels.
After five movies and nearly two decades, you would think that the Mission: Impossible series would begin to lose its momentum. Remarkably, the series is still just as strong as ever, maybe even more so, with both Ghost Protocol and the latest, Rogue Nation now peaking as my top favorites.
Sequels sell like hotcakes. Filmgoers cannot be faulted for summing up today’s film industry simply as that. We don’t really need to draw up any charts or statistics to figure out that half of the films in 2015 consist of sequels.
Inside Out is the latest in a long line of Pixar films that deal with the personification of something that you may have thought to be emotionless. Rather than bugs, toys, or fish this time, though, it is dealing directly with emotions themselves. What if the inner workings of our head were similar to an operational business, where our emotions literally guide and influence the actions in our daily life?
The central idea to Tomorrowland, Disney’s latest attempt to turn a theme park attraction into a blockbuster spectacle, is flawless. Instead of being pessimistic about the future, why don’t we adopt the same attitudes of previous generations and look at the future with a sense of optimism, awe and wonder? After all, today’s younger generations are being fed miserable visions of the future by pop culture, with every major summer tentpole movie of the past few years having villains who argue that the best way to save both the planet and humanity as a whole is to destroy it.
Anyone who is familiar with George Miller’s Mad Max series must have been eagerly anticipating his latest as much as I have. It has now been 30 years since we last saw Max in his post-apocalyptic desert world. But it is almost as if no time has passed.