FULL DISCLOSURE (1): I arrived uncharacteristically late to my scheduled press screening of “The Boss Baby.” This had the notable effect of improving the film by virtue of its abbreviated runtime, raising my opinion from “festering, putrid malignancy” to “unbearably bad.” This is an improvement that can only be fully understood by enduring either “The […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Beauty and the Beast” – Stale and Old as Time
Somewhere in a parallel universe, Disney produced a live-action “Beauty and the Beast” directed by Guillermo del Toro. No singing; just dark beauty, true to the source. Somewhere in time and space, that film is unspooling in a theater even as I write this, and a new generation of children – girls and boys alike […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Get Out” — A ‘White Guilt’ Film Torn Between Camp and Horror
Horror films are notoriously difficult to review. It’s a genre predicated on the ability to shock and surprise, which means reading a write-up like this one is sort of like getting the punchline before the joke. However, in the case of “Get Out,” if you’ve already seen the trailer, you’ve seen just about every plot […]
Dagger Movie Night: “A United Kingdom” — Cheesy Oscar Bait, But Good and Honest Cheese
Behold the fabled Prestige Film! There are some for whom this hook is repellant: the worm dangling like a flaccid organ, poised to ejaculate manipulative emotion like award-attracting pheromones. Look at the pretty British actors! Playing people who were significantly less pretty in real life! Sprinkle contrivance and season the historical record with Hollywood tropes, […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Fifty Shades Darker” — Is Female Subjugation Still Sexy in Trump’s America?
You might have heard about this story everyone’s talking about on TV, on the radio, or around the water cooler: all about this rich, creepy weirdo who uses his money and inherited power to objectify and possess women, even going so far as to commit sexual assault in public locations? No, I’m not talking about […]
Dagger Movie Night: “A Monster Calls” — A Testament to Honesty in Difficult Situations
The most frequent criticism of the book version of “A Monster Calls” is that it is overly dark and depressing. While that may be true, it speaks more to our sensibilities concerning death than to the reality of coping with the final act. The original book was conceived by Siobhan Dowd as she was in […]
Dagger Movie Night – “Star Trek Beyond”: Action-Packed, but Fails to Engage
The revival of the Star Trek franchise has centered on a more action-oriented focus, and while this approach has ingratiated the movies to a modern audience, it is not without its flaws. Among a fan base that considers Star Trek to be the “thinking person’s” science fiction, the lack of truly engaging scripts at the […]
Dagger Movie Night: “Me Before You” — A Testament to the Worst Kind of Romantic Movie
Little more than a thinly-structured attempt at forcing tears out of you, “Me Before You” is a testament to the worst kind of romantic movie. Rather than develop characters, a story, or a point to all this, Thea Sharrock simply throws on the soft filter and has Emilia Clarke make doe eyes while wiggling her […]
