From the Outhouse to the Art House
The inescapable destruction of landmarks, such as London, were assembled with the grace of a student driver late for school on his girlfriend’s birthday. To describe them as operating on “auto pilot” implies a mechanical design to the madness on-screen that I failed to recognize.
The four-month stretch (traditionally lasting May through August) has a reputation for exclusively offering the latest in popcorn munching, big budget spectacles but there’s plenty to offer for the discerning viewer. 2016 looks like it’ll have much to choose from cinematically, whether it be the production of an above average thought or just big dumb fun.
SPOILERS FOR BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE The climactic action set piece to Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, the second entry in D.C. Comics’ burgeoning cinematic universe, feature’s the company’s trinity (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) battling the monstrous Doomsday, a Frankenstein-esque creation by Lex Luthor that threatens to destroy Metropolis and the... Continue Reading →
That narrative summation of Hell's Club still neglects to mention the various other threads that barely hold the experiment from tearing apart. The video’s overlapping dialogue, consciously uniform lighting design, and digital compositing makes you feel like you’re experiencing an animate wax museum that draws little distinctions between genres or even multiple personas of different actors.
Even over fifteen years later, X-Men continues to stand as an artistic watermark that both its sequels and the larger genre marketplace have routinely failed to live up to. Progressively, the franchise seems obsessed with constructing elaborate action set pieces and further complicating a continuity that skirts the edges of outright collapse. You could say this is an attempt to make a larger splash in a market that prizes shared universes and interconnected narratives but you would only be half right.
Had we ever seen an animated film as emotionally dense as Inside Out? Had a seventy plus year old director ever made an action movie as on edge and youthful as Mad Max: Fury Road? Did The Big Short make our understanding of the financial system even more tragically comic? The fact that these and many more questions exist prove that 2015 was very much so a solid year for movies.
The Force Awakens is a terrific entry into the Star Wars saga for a number of reasons but the one that permeates it so thoroughly is its hearty investment in character.
Return of the Jedi, the final entry in the original trilogy, makes a final gasp at extending the series’ tradition of memorable creature design. We get to see old favorites and original creatures that continue to prove just how vast and diverse the Star Wars universe is.
And when it comes to memorable lightsaber duels, there is no better example than the climax of The Empire Strikes Back, the middle chapter to the original trilogy. Our hero, Luke Skywalker, goes toe-to-toe with the ominous force of villainy known as Darth Vader. The atmospheric environment within the vast, deserted halls of Cloud City highlight a meeting of the minds that has been teased but yet to be realized over the course of a film and three quarters.
But even after all these years, special editions, fan edits, novelizations, and impending sequels, Star Wars holds up as a profound cinematic experience that uses all of the medium’s narrative and stylistic tricks to imbue in its audience a memorable journey of escapism.
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