Boy, did I have my work cut out for the worst of 2019 this year. It was all-too easy to rack up ten bad movies, and that’s without having seen The Hustle, The Lion King, or Dark Phoenix! Continue reading
2019
The Fast and Fentress Best of 2019
Hot on the heels of my 2018 lists, here’s my roundup of my favorite movies from last year. Continue reading
Captain Marvel
Captain Obvious
The best thing about the release of Captain Marvel is that it brings us one step closer to the end of the nonsensical internet drama surrounding it. I won’t be going into that here, chiefly out of self-preservation, but a quick Google search should inform the more masochistic among you. I’ll offer just one thought on the matter: things as trivial as superhero movies have no business being cultural battlegrounds. Consequently, this review will only cover my thoughts on the movie itself – not its “impact,” nor “what it means,” nor “why it matters.” Continue reading
The Wandering Earth
The Best-Laid Planets
Of all the cinematic trash I have a soft spot for, few genres are closer to my heart than the save-the-world disaster movie. Give me your Armageddons, your Day After Tomorrows, your Cores; I cherish them all. I suspect that’s because the genre is one that so readily lends itself to corniness; how can one be expected to tackle a premise as melodramatic as saving the world without, well, melodrama? Continue reading
Serenity
All Wet
“There’s some weird stuff going on right now,” drawls Matthew McConaughey in Serenity. He doesn’t know the half of it. McConaughey plays Baker Dill, a fisherman on the picturesque, ambiguously-located Plymouth Island. Baker spends his days taking lazy tourists for chartered fishing trips while obsessing over a particular tuna that has evaded him multiple times. His first mate Duke (the always-charismatic Djimon Hounsou) worries about Baker’s deteriorating mental state, as well as the pair’s dwindling funds. Continue reading
The Prodigy
That Boy Ain’t Right
Let’s face it: some kids are just creepy. If they weren’t, the bad-seed trope wouldn’t be such a workhorse of a horror premise, still bearing fruit eons after its inception. The fear of our own offspring turning against us is disturbing on a primal, universal level, unconfined to any one culture or time period. Speaking more generally, the perversion of innocence has always been an upsetting prospect, and what could possibly be more innocent than a child? Truth be told, there’s not much left to do with the creepy-kid genre, but while The Prodigy doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it delivers an uncommonly solid execution of the formula. Continue reading
Velvet Buzzsaw
This Just Won’t Cut It
Velvet Buzzsaw is a movie I wanted to like – to love, even. The last time Dan Gilroy and Jake Gyllenhaal teamed up we got 2014’s excellent Nightcrawler, and given the gonzo premise of their new collaboration, I thought I was in for a good time. But the Netflix movie curse spares few; even up-and-coming directors and A-list actors cannot escape its grasp. The streaming service’s marketing would have you believe Velvet Buzzsaw is first and foremost a horror film, but the truth is the horror is an afterthought. So is everything else in the movie. Continue reading
Glass
The Cracks Begin to Show
In a way, the timing of Glass couldn’t be better. When M. Night Shyamalan made his superhero subversion Unbreakable in 2000, he couldn’t possibly have predicted the current dominion superhero movies have over the film industry. With the advent of Glass, he’s had eighteen years of new cultural DNA to analyze for the long-gestating conclusion of his trilogy. Sadly, Glass ends up being the worst movie of the three. Continue reading