Category: Movie Reviews

Okay, maybe one more.

With my previous review, I said I was finished writing about movies, but I wasn’t 100% truthful about why. It has gotten harder to do, it’s true, but the fact of the matter is that when I move to Madison (for those not connected to me on socials, we’re moving to Wisconsin), I have to resign from the Columbus Film Critics Association, so bye bye early screenings. Once that happens, odds are you all will see more movies than I do. You probably already do, at this point.

Can I tell you something?

It really feels like this will be my final review.

When I went to see “Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 3,” that thought couldn’t have been further from my mind. When I sat down to write about it, though, something strange happened.

I didn’t feel like writing about it. AND I REALLY LIKED THE MOVIE. That doesn’t happen, like, ever.

There’s a certain beauty to how much technical wizardry James Cameron inserts into details that don’t really matter that much. The Marines in “Avatar: The Way of Water” possess machinery and weaponry that are the stuff of sci-fi wet dreams, yet here they’re just part of the scenery. That’s what gets Cameron excited: the ability to show the audience something they’ve never seen before, while treating it as if it’s no big deal.

If only he paid that level of attention to his screenwriting. Case in point: early in the film, a commanding officer tells his men, “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” It’s 2022, and Cameron is putting 83-year-old pop culture references in his scripts. Jesus.

The ending of “Irresistible” is a cinematic chef’s kiss, a move that bears resemblance to a somewhat recent Martin Scorsese movie, of all things (a comparison that will surely thrill writer/director Jon Stewart). It’s the kind of thing that only a politics junkie like Stewart would put in a story.

Unfortunately, getting there is a bit of a chore. The movie starts off strongly enough, but the middle part drags, seemingly forgetting that it’s a comedy. If “Irresistible” were as funny as it is clever, it would be an instant classic.

In the 14 years between 1995’s “Toy Story” and 2009’s “Up,” exactly four men had sat in a Pixar director’s chair. Starting with 2010’s “Toy Story 3,” there was a concerted effort to spread the wealth, and founding fathers John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Pete Docter, along with unofficial Pixar brother Brad Bird, only directed one film each over the next decade, while seven others helmed the rest.

This is where a rather disturbing pattern emerges. Of those new directors, the only one to make films on par with Pixar’s best work was Lee Unkrich, who directed “Toy Story 3” and “Coco” (and won Oscars for both) after serving as co-director for Lasseter, Stanton, and Docter, and clearly learning a few things along the way. Remove the films made by Unkrich and the founding fathers, and you’re left with “Brave,” “Monsters University,” “The Good Dinosaur,” “Cars 3,” and “Toy Story 4.” That’s the Pixar movie marathon that runs nonstop on TV in the Medium Place.

That the makers of “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” could find time in their schedules to write and shoot a sequel, with all eight of the principle characters, two years after the original, is simply unthinkable in this day and age. It took Disney six years to follow up “Frozen,” and it took Sony a decade before “Zombieland: Double Tap” happened. They must have had a can’t-miss idea ready to throw at audiences, right?

Disney has a ridiculous amount of power at the moment. In addition to owning Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm, they also purchased Twentieth Century Fox’s film catalog, which terrified “Rocky Horror Picture Show” fans in particular, who were concerned that the Mouse House would no longer allow late-night screenings of the film. (So far, it appears that Disney will allow business as usual on that front, as they should.) They’re also pulling a lot of their content from streaming sources in order to consolidate their properties at Disney+. They’re basically one or two more moves away from becoming a Bond villain.