@curiosity-inc
Movie Curiosities — Top Gun: Maverick
May 28, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
For nearly 25 years, nobody ever thought to conceive of a sequel for Top Gun. The original film came out in 1986, and the announcement of an impending sequel came from the late director Tony Scott in 2010. Nobody had any idea what he was thinking or why Top Gun needed a sequel, but Scott was going to try and make one with Christopher McQuarrie — Tom Cruise’s longtime creative/business partner — writing the script. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities — Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)
May 24, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
This is one of those blessedly rare few times when I wish I had a giant corkboard and miles of differently colored yarns, because that’s what we really need to make any sense of how we got to where we are now. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Pleasure
May 23, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
My screening of Pleasure opened with an introduction from writer/director Ninja Thyberg and star Sofia Kappel, who made a big deal about how this is the feature debut for both of them. More importantly, they made it perfectly clear that while many scenes may be difficult to watch, they were all filmed with the utmost of caution and they had a grand time making the movie.
I’m sure I speak for everyone to ever see the movie when I reply, “Thanks for the warning.” Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Men
May 22, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
“I’ll give you an easy way to know when something is resolved: You don’t wish it never happened.”
–Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey
Movie Curiosities: Operation Mincemeat
May 19, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
It’s no secret that Netflix has seen better days. While the company is still a titan of online streaming, they’ve lost quite a few subscribers in recent months, they’ve laid off numerous employees, and their tumbling stocks have been the subject of much discussion. Predictably, Netflix itself and the media conglomerates were quick to blame password sharing and online piracy for the loss of revenue, but of course we all know it can’t be that simple. No doubt Netflix’s own terrible PR blunders share some of the blame, particularly with regards to how they’ve handled their controversial programming decisions (like a special for Dave Chappelle, for one especially inflammatory instance). Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Firestarter (2022)
May 15, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Full disclosure: I’m coming into this one totally fresh. I haven’t read the book, nor have I seen the 1984 adaptation with Drew Barrymore. All I knew of Firestarter (2022) going in is that it’s a Blumhouse release, meaning it would be a horror film made on the cheap. I also knew it was written by Scott Teems, who co-wrote Halloween Kills and hasn’t done much of anything noteworthy else. In the director’s chair is Keith Thomas, who only technically made his film debut last year with The Vigil, another Blumhouse release that got so far lost in the scrum of 2021 that it barely got released and nobody saw it.
And that right there is pretty much all you need to know about this one. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
May 8, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
With Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, we enter a new stage of the MCU. We’re getting the point where it’s no longer enough just to keep up with the two dozen films in the superfranchise to date — now, you’d better have a Disney+ subscription and enough time on your hands to sit through the Marvel Studios TV miniseries offerings. See, we had been lead to believe that this latest film would be a sequel to the first Doctor Strange, or perhaps a follow-up to the cataclysmic events of Spider-Man: No Way Home. But no, it turns out that the previous multiversal disaster is barely ever mentioned and this is a sequel to “Wandavision”, of all things. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Bubble
May 1, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
We’re in for a slow few weeks at the movies, folks. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is coming next weekend, and it’s promising to dominate the box office so thoroughly that no other studio wants to be anywhere near it. As if to prove the point, this weekend’s only noteworthy wide release is Memory, in which Liam Neeson plays a grizzled old action hero like he hasn’t already done that umpteen times in the past fifteen years. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
April 24, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
A guy walks into a Hollywood studio executive’s office and he says “I’ve got the most amazing project, you’ve gotta greenlight this.” Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: The Bad Guys
April 23, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Well, this was a happy little accident. And it couldn’t have come at a better time for Dreamworks Animation. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: The Northman
April 22, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Robert Eggers is still best known as a pioneer who helped birth the recent trend of low-budget/high-concept psychological “prestige horror” films that keep the lights on at A24. (Of course, there’s an argument to be made that Jennifer Kent is the true mother of the movement by way of The Babadook, but that’s for another time.) Eggers’ previous efforts were The Witch and The Lighthouse, both of which were so utterly spellbinding that they remain the subject of blazing artistic debate to this day. My own personal interpretation is that they’re best viewed as companion films, as both are centered around decently sympathetic yet deeply flawed individuals forced into isolation and completely unmade when confronted with a higher power. With The Witch, that higher power was literally Satan; with The Lighthouse, the higher power was metaphorically God. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Ambulance
April 17, 2022 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
The name “Michael Bay” remains synonymous with The Rock and Armageddon, both movies that came out over twenty years ago. Before Pearl Harbor and The Island turned out to be such catastrophic disgraces that we all collectively agreed to sweep them under the rug and pretend they never happened. Then 2007 came, and Bay got himself bogged down in the Transformers franchise until the wheels finally came off. Read the rest of this entry →
