Author: msobczak1138

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Barbie

Barbie

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As Barbie helpfully reminds us via an ingenious opening sequence, playtime for young girls before Barbie left much to be desired.  Young girls were given baby dolls to play with, subtly  coercing them into choosing motherhood when they grew up.  When Barbie appeared on the scene in 1959, she liberated the minds of young girls everywhere.  (The movie cannily represents this seismic moment using a famous scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, with Barbie standing in for the monolith.)  Barbie made it possible for girls to imagine a life other than being a mother.  Girls could see themselves growing up to become pretty, confident and independent women, with their choice of careers ranging from athletes to lawyers to astronauts.  Whereas baby dolls were tools of indoctrination in the guise of toys, Barbie symbolized what was possible.

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

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If you’re familiar with the mythology of Dracula, you already know the fate of the Demeter and its doomed crew going into this movie.  The ship left Romania bound for England, encountered fierce storms and a strange man on board and the crew disappearing one by one.  When the Demeter reaches shore, the crew are nowhere to be found.  The ship’s undead cargo, Dracula, wisely disembarked for London long before he could be discovered amidst the shattered remains of the ship.

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The Beanie Bubble

The Beanie Bubble

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By the time you read this review of The Beanie Bubble, the internet will already have produced at least a dozen think pieces discussing 2023 as “The Year Brands Came to the Movies”.  I would assume that they all touch on what is the most logical reason why movies are suddenly suffering from brand-itis: marketing these movies is so much simpler than selling a biography.  What would you be more inclined to watch, a movie about Ty Warner and the people behind the company that produced beanie babies, or a movie about the untold story of beanie babies?  Marketing a movie about a product is so much easier because generations of people are familiar with Beanie Babies.  It stands to reason that they’d be interested in a movie about a product they bought at some point in time.

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Meg 2 The Trench

Meg 2: The Trench

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Every year Hollywood releases a silly blockbuster that wants nothing more than to entertain us.  Two years ago it was Venom: There Will Be Carnage.  Last year brought Jurassic World: Dominion.  This year’s model is Meg 2: The Trench, a movie that figures the best way to keep the audience amused is not by being just a Jaws rip-off, like its predecessor, but by ripping off as many movies as possible within its two hour runtime.  Never fear, the Jaws elements are still there.  However, they are left in the dust in this movie’s quest to become the buffet dinner version of action movies.  Case in point: the opening scene, where a prehistoric monster eats a prehistoric monster until our friend the Megaladon arrives.  I half expected to see Adam Driver’s ship land in the background.  (For those unaware, that’s a 65 reference.)

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Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer

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In retrospect, Christopher Nolan was always the obvious choice to make a movie about Robert Oppenheimer.  As a director, Nolan has spent most of his career making movies with puzzle narratives.  I can think of no other director who could better relate to the man who solved the biggest puzzle of physics: how to harness atomic energy, the underlying power of the universe?  Given how simpatico Nolan is with his subject, it seems that it was only a matter of time when Nolan would make a movie about the father of the atomic bomb.

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Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1

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Sooner or later, artificial Intelligence will kill humanity.  That’s what science fiction has been predicting for decades.  From N.O.M.A.D. in the original Star Trek series to Skynet in the Terminator movies to The Matrix, it’s just a matter of time before AI takes over and pushes humanity aside for good.  I always figured we had more time, given that science fiction is about the future, which I assumed was decades away.  Unfortunately, as Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 tells us, the future is now.  AI’s first salvo is when it sabotages a Russian sub in the movie’s opening moments, a sequence that made me think wistfully about The Hunt for Red October.  Alas, the bad guy isn’t a Russkie hell-bent on destroying America, but a glowing orb on a computer screen.  If only HAL were here to witness the ultimate triumph of your kind.

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Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken

Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken

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In Roger Ebert’s review for Ratatouille, he emphasizes how animated film isn’t just for children, but for the whole family and even adults going on their own.  I kept thinking about that while watching Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken, a hyperactive, garish, humorless and unoriginal animated movie made ostensibly for children.  Amazingly, this is the second animated film released in the last year or so that uses a girl’s transition into womanhood as a metaphor for gaining supernatural powers.  Pixar’s Turning Red was released over a year before this movie and is the far superior film in every way.

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Insidious: The Red Door

Insidious: The Red Door

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In The Red Door, the fifth entry in the Insidious series, the Lamberts are once again pursued by demons who want to possess members of the family.  The Lamberts have to be the unluckiest family unit since Craig T. Nelson and company in the Poltergeist movies from the Eighties.  You would think after one failed attempt, the evil beings would move onto another family, but no.  If at first you don’t succeed, scare, scare again, eh?

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny aspires to be a satisfying final chapter for Indiana Jones character.  You may remember that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull basically did the exact same thing back in 2008.  That entry introduced a son of Indiana Jones who presumably would take over the series for his father.  Unfortunately, even though that movie was financially successful, it was not well received by the fans.  Alas, the torch was not passed and fifteen years later Harrison Ford is back one last time to close the book on Indiana Jones for good.

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