Thursday, March 30, 2017

Crisp Criticism - "The Lego Batman Movie", "Ghost in the Shell", "Life", "The Space Between Us"

by
Julien Faddoul













The Lego Batman Movie **

A cooler-than-ever Bruce Wayne must deal with the usual suspects as they plan to rule Gotham City, while discovering that he has accidentally adopted a teenage orphan who wishes to become his sidekick.
In many ways superior to the original because it bypasses that film’s saccharine message for a treatment that is less labored, with a ferocious outpouring of gags, some of which are quite funny. But this is Ironic with a capital “I” and, like the original, the humour can get exhausting.

d – Chris McKay
w – Seth Grahame-Smith, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Jared Stern, John Whittington   (Based on the Character Created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger)
pd – Grant Freckelton
m – Lorne Balfe
ed – David Burrows, John Venzon, Matt Villa

p – Dan Lin, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Roy Lee

Cast: Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes, Jenny Slate

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Crisp Criticism - "Beauty and the Beast", "The Boss Baby", "Power Rangers"

by
Julien Faddoul













Beauty and the Beast

A remake of an animated film made and released by The Walt Disney Company in 1991.
A critic-proof film through and through. To those who follow my writing, what is there left for me to say about a concoction such as this? Would it affect you for me to say that transposing an animated masterpiece to another medium and recreating it, at times shot-for-shot, is utterly pointless? Maybe. Would it do the world any good for me to point out how unethical that is for the hundreds of artists who spent years generating said masterpiece frame-by-frame whose work has been plagiarized? Perhaps. Would it sway you for me to state that the filmmakers behind this version have justified such behavior by adding another 40 minutes to the runtime with additional songs and plot elements that are all uniformly bad? It might. Would you find any point in my impression that in a full-scale musical containing some of the best songs ever written, no actual singing is ever heard outside of the audio processing provided by Auto-tune? Possibly. But judging from the box-office receipts that have collected after only a month, it is clear that you, dear readers, have already decided whether to participate in such solecism or not (as well as the rest of Disney’s plan involving the live-action appropriation of their own animated classics). All I can do is provide my perspective of the experience in question. For me, this film is disgusting, cynical, anti-audience and anti-art, and it saddened me deeply.

d – Bill Condon
w – Stephen Chbosky, Evan Spiliotopoulos
ph – Tobias A. Schliessler
pd – Sarah Greenwood
m – Alan Menken
ed – Virginia Katz
cos – Jacqueline Durran

p – David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman

Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Vans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Hattie Morahan, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Nathan Mack, Audra McDonald, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

The Films of 2017



203 Films

For all reviews click here.


****




***

BPM (Beats Per Minute)



**

The Breadwinner
Lucky



*

Annabelle: Creation
Beach Rats
Beatriz at Dinner
Cat Fight
Felicite
The Foreigner
47 Meters Down
Gerald's Game
The Girl with All the Gifts
Icarus
Ingrid Goes West
It Comes at Night
Lady Macbeth
The Lure
Meagan Levy
Menashe
The Queen of Spain
Strong Island
To the Bone
Truman
Wilson
Woodshock



NO STARS

The Belko Experiment
Better Watch Out
Blind
Bright
The Bye Bye Man
The Circle
Crown Heights
A Dog's Purpose
Everything, Everything
Fist Fight
Friend Request
Fun Mom Dinner
Gifted
Goon: Last of the Enforcers
The Great Wall
Hampstead
Home Again
Kidnap
The Last Word
LBJ
Marshall
Pottersville
Rings
Same Kind of Different as Me
Sandy Wexler
The Secret Scripture
The Sense of an Ending
Sleepless
Tulip Fever
Unforgettable
The Void
XXX: Return of Xander Cage