Ready Player One Is, For Better And For Worse, A Traditional Action Blockbuster

After a whole decade of being absent from the realm of American blockbuster cinema, director Steven Spielberg returns to the genre he helped bring into existence with Ready Player One, an adaptation of a 2011 novel penned by Ernest Cline. Given just what a tremendous track record Spielberg has with blockbuster fare (I'd personally say his only two real misses in that subgenre would be Temple of Doom and The Lost World), the idea of him returning to rollicking escapism science-fiction blockbusters sounds like a winning prospect, though the excerpts I've read from the Ready Player One book (which, for full context, I've never read in full) did make the source material he was adapting seem more creepy than exciting, thus diluting my excitement for this newest Spielberg fetaure immensely.

Dunkirk Is An Incredible War Movie That Goes All-In On Uniqueness

Dunkirk very much does not rest on the laurels of convention in many key aspects of how it chooses to tell the real life story of the World War II rescue mission called the Dunkirk Evacuation. One expects ambition from Christopher Nolan's work at this point, with it mostly paying off for him as a filmmaker while his weaker movies (the still really good The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar) being remarkably admirable in their audaciousness, but kinda like how Edgar Wright demonstrated he could do gangster movies with the same sense of brilliant energy and creativity that he had with his comedy with last month's Baby Driver, Nolan uses his sense of ambition on Dunkirk to chart new territory for himself as a filmmaker. Both in the pantheon of his filmography and as a movie in its own right, Dunkirk really does cement itself as something special.

The BFG Review

At this point, Steven Spielberg knows the name of the blockbuster game. Hell, he pioneered it with Jaws, which was far from the first movie to bring spectacle to the big screen, but it was the first movie to utilize release patterns and box office grosses that are all too familiar today. And while his newest The BFG isn't technically a "summer blockbuster", instead being a family movie, it's still got oodles of visual effects and a prime 4th of July summer release date, both elements that are familiar terrain for one of cinema's rightfully most celebrated auteurs. Returning to the realm of family fare for the first time since Hook (not counting his 2011 effort The Adventures Of Tintin), one might understandably query if the man's absence from this avenue of storytelling might leave him rusty, perhaps out of touch with the times.

A New BFG Trailer Has Arrived For All Of Us Human Beans to Watch!

Roal Dahl is a trick author to adapt to film. His works were so full of flights of the most fantastical kind of fantasy that it can be difficult for certain filmmakers to adapt such works into cohesive features. Tim Burtons Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, for instance, does not work in any shape or form any way you slice it. As its own thing, it's a repetitive slog sorely lacking in whimsy or fun, while as an adaptation it's borderline infuriating. Like I said, the books of Dahl thrived on the nonsensical and all of that vagary found in the text is tossed aside so that the root of all of Willy Wonka's idiosyncrasies are....daddy issues. His father was dentist ya see. Not only did it go against the spirit of the source material, it was an eye-rolling plot development take in the context of just the film itself. Screw that garbage.

Spielberg Goes Big Instead Of Going Home In The First Trailer For The BFG

I've been super curious to see what trailers Disney attaches to screenings of a small indie movie of theirs coming out next week called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Captain America: Civil War is a given, but anything else? Typically, studios get to put two trailers for their upcoming features in the coming attractions of their movies, but I wouldn't be shocked if this tradition got bucked for a massive film like The Force Awakens a Disney got to three trailers on this new sci-fi adventure (hell, 20th Century Fox got to put trailers for three of their upcoming films on my screening of Victor Frankenstein just this past Saturday). So theoretically, what two other 2016 Disney movies would they choose to promote?