Under six feet of ground, no-one can hear your characters scream for attention. This could be a tagline for the recent purge of content announced by both Disney Plus and HBO Max, which has since renamed itself as simply Max.
Continue reading
In the words of one Dave Grohl, I’ve got another confession to make. I am not a fan of the John Wick series. Despite my best efforts and cleanest of intentions, I could never extract enough enjoyment from watching any of its instalments to join in on what seemed to look like unanimous acclaim. Every time I find myself at odds with the mainstream consensus, I always scratch my head and wonder why that is. I don’t necessarily wish I was a part of the ‘in’ crowd, but I am still curious where this dissonance is coming from. And after much deliberation I surmised that John Wick movies are not movies. They are video games. Or at least they are built like them.
Continue reading
Recent reports suggest that Disney is restructuring and re-engineering Disney Plus. They have announced: (1) the rollout of an ad-supported tier across Europe, (2) full consolidation of Disney Plus and Hulu, (3) a scaling down of production of content intended for consumption on the Disney Plus platform, and (4) impending removal of unspecified amounts of films and TV shows from the platform. And it’s not good news for anyone.
Continue reading
Thirty years ago today, an unspeakable tragedy took place on the set of The Crow where a terrible accident claimed the life of young Brandon Lee. He was twenty-eight years old at the time and in the eyes of many, he was on the precipice of stardom. We will never know how his life would have shaped up had he not been taken away from us prematurely. All we can do is speculate and ponder about alleged supernatural forces and a family curse, as almost exactly two decades earlier, in 1973, his father died under equally mysterious circumstances.
Continue reading
With the recent news of Quentin Tarantino allegedly setting his sights on another movie circulating on the mouths of film bloggers, tweeters and other denizens of the widespread online film community, the customary conversations regarding the quality of his filmmaking output have also arisen in the same circles. Now, I have never been particularly fond of writing listicles; though I won’t go as far as to claim that if you see me writing one, you should do me a favour and take me behind the shed to put me out of my misery (that’s likely because I am pretty sure I have written some in the past). However, these recent revelations of Tarantino circling another movie, which by his own admission may be his last even though I’d be willing to bet a substantial amount of money on his coming out of this self-imposed retirement sooner than he would ever imagine, combined with the fact he is turning sixty today, brought me to write a few words about the way I go about ranking his movies.
Continue reading
‘Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should’, says Ian Malcolm – all clad in black like a nerd rock star – to the congregation of genetic engineers swooning over their wondrous achievement of cloning long-extinct dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg’s classic Jurassic Park. The lesson of the 1993 classic, which by the way is celebrating its 30th birthday this year, is that we should perhaps think twice before acting on our radical ideas because we may not have the acumen or necessary understanding of the world to handle the consequences.
Continue reading
If there is anything we can say with absolute certainty about Knock at the Cabin, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest directorial effort, it is that it is incredibly familiar and immediately invites reviewers to see it in the context of the man’s previous work. Indeed, Shyamalan seems to be a creature of habit compelled to ‘go back to the well’ and revisit themes and ideas which have haunted his existence throughout his entire career. However, it seems that at least some of the contents of that well may not have been appreciated by audiences the way they perhaps should have.
Continue reading
Do you ever wonder if you are losing your wits? Do you think it’s much more often than it used to be when you forget someone’s name and then you go on Google to look up dementia symptoms and find all the links are purple? Because that’s more or less where I am now, or at least how I feel about the Oscar nominations.
Continue reading
It is honestly fascinating to observe how Avatar: The Way of Water is ploughing relentlessly through the vast expanses of the worldwide box office, now on course to eclipse a whopping target of two billion dollars, all in the space of just about a month since its much-anticipated release. But equally, this unstoppable juggernaut is already slowly evaporating from our consciousness.
Continue reading
It’s January and as everyone on Film Twitter will know, it’s the time of getting that nice email from Letterboxd with a beautiful summary of the movies you watched in the previous year, the star-ratings you dished out, the stars you championed, the list you prepared etc., a.k.a. The Year in Review. Consequently, what you will end up seeing on your social media timelines is a veritable slew of stats coming from your friends, followers and complete strangers, some brandishing their ludicrous-plus numbers of movies they consumed in 2022, some casually gloating over their perfect Gaussian distribution of star-ratings and others seeking their status conferred upon them by the society at large due to their impeccable taste in cinema.
Continue reading
Flasz On Film 