Clint Eastwoods Deconstructs The Very Genre That Launched Him To Stardom In Unforgiven

James Mangold and Hugh Jackman have cited many movies that carried a large influence over the creation of their 2017 X-Men feature Logan and it's no surprise to hear that Unforgiven was one particular movie Jackman saw as a guiding light for that final Wolverine movie (The Wrestler was another, similar unsurprising, point of inspiration for Jackman). Both Unforgiven and Logan star actors who play older weary versions of iconic stock characters they became famous for playing inhabiting a more realistic world low on hope and high on danger. Because Logan is dealing with an ex-superhero, the movie is able to end, after an entire film of bleak nastiness, on a note of hopefulness that the heroics Logan once committed will inspire a new generation to rise up and become beacons of hope in their own right. 

Zootopia Review

Some of the most loved rhetoric to describe gestating projects by Hollywood producers is "grounded" or "realistic", mainly as a way to give prospective moviegoers the idea that the film in question will be akin to box office hits like The Dark Knight. Typically though, the movies in question end up just diluting the color grading and making everything super gloomy in terms of tone instead of going for the rich characters and thrilling action that made The Dark Knight and other successful "grounded" and "realistic" motion pictures so unique.

A Look At The Highest Grossing Movies Of The 21st Century

In the first 14 years of the 21st century, a wide variety of films have come around to arise as champions, in that they became the biggest movies of their respective years of release. Looking over the movies that have managed to achieve such a feat, I was surprised to see high quality features usually (emphasis on usually) top the years box office. The Avengers, Toy Story 3, The Dark Knight, The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King and Avatar (yes, I know I lost respect from many of you right there) are all excellent films that managed to make untold amounts of moolah.

Can We Start Giving Superhero Movies Some Respect: Part Two: Electric Insult Boogaloo

Well hey! Like anything that's successful, here's a sequel to my earlier editorial surrounding the topic of giving superhero movies some respect. It's a subject that I'm not alone in advocating for, as someone very high up in the industry has spoken out in favor of giving superhero films some respect from people. What's triggered this kind of chitter chatter, and this editorial sequel, you ask?

Home Alone Is Mildly Inconsistent, But Surprisingly Effective Yuletide Cinema

Welcome to 25 Days Of Christmas Pop Culture! From now until Christmas Eve, I'll be tackling one piece of Christmas pop culture! It could be a book, movie, TV special, song....so long as it's festive for this time of the year, it'll be checked out in this daily column!

I see a lot of people talking about how movies were better "back in the day", which always makes my eyes roll. People have always wanted good storytelling when they go to the cinema, that's never changed. Frankly, I'd actually say the years top movies are indeed better than they used to be. The past few years top features have included The Avengers, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Dark Knight and Toy Story 3, all excellent films. Bizarrely, the biggest movie of 1990 was not Goodfellas or Awakenings, but rather Home Alone.

Christopher Nolan Has Left The DC Comics Building

Christopher Nolan pretty much revolutionized blockbuster cinema with his Dark Knight trilogy, which took a cinematic icon (Batman) and made him the center of an epic saga filled with great acting and compelling stories. Nolan was kept onboard for the first DC Comics feature after The Dark Knights trilogies conclusion, Man of Steel, though here he was solely a producer. Steel had lots of Nolan's influence, but none of that influence felt personal. Instead, Zack Snyder just seemed to be mimicking the "darkness" and "brooding" of The Dark Knight trilogy without realizing those weren't the sole elements that made those movies successful.

The List!!!: Five Classic Reboots

In The List!!!, I do a list that just reeks of being click-bait, analyzing a particular topic or subject that pertains to something major occurring in pop-culture. This week, in honor of Dawn of The Planet of The Apes, a sequel to a reboot, I look at five classic reboots

In the internet community, the word reboot is as filthy as a towel used by Jabba The Hutt. Surely, all a reboot brings is the tarnishing of the original movies, while only serving as a cynical cash-grab. In reality, reboots vary in quality, but they hardly ever do damage to the beloved original movies (which must not have been that beloved if all it took to ruin its reputation was a poorly made reboot) and in fact, several reboots have turned out to be fantastic movies themselves. Here are five particular reboots that, in my opinion, aren't just good reboots, but great films.

Franchise Frenzy: The Dark Knight Trilogy

Welcome to Franchise Frenzy! Every other week I post a column analyzing the quality and pop culture impact of a certain Hollywood franchise. This week, I swear to Christopher Nolan and cover The Dark Knight trilogy.

Three movies have really impact blockbuster cinema in the 21st Century: Spider-Man, Batman Begins and The Avengers (Inception as well, but mainly because every trailer now needs a BWAAAAMMMM) Spider-Man opened the floodgates for comic book movies, while The Avengers told everyone that more complex blockbuster storytelling was possible. And every single reboot for a while there cited Batman Begins expert mix of darkness and fun as the ultimate way to pull off a blockbuster film.

Maleficent Reivew

The Only Explanation For This Movies Badness is Magic...Or Poor Filmmaking

Even she looks shocked at how bad this film is!

The best villains in cinema have an aura of mystery to them. Would The Joker be that imposing in The Dark Knight if we knew all of his backstory? How about Richie DiMaso in American Hustle? And if Boba Fett was revealed to be Bill Phillips, an accountant from Oregon, would he still remain so thrilling? (Ok, maybe that last one could work if Noah Baumbach directed. Frances Hoth we could call it) Maleficent makes the crucial mistake thinking that the only thing missing from that impeccable villain is a "tragic" backstory, that really just amounts to Twilight-esque romance and inconsistent characters.

Their main trouble is that the titular characters only appearance in any other media prior to this was the 1959 masterpiece Sleeping Beauty, as well as some Kingdom Hearts media. Unlike the characters seen in Disney's past two fantasy films (Alice In Wonderland and Oz The Great And Powerful), there aren't dozens of different cinematic interpretations of this characters to go through. That's not a terrible scenario; if they were smart, they would forget all about the original Disney movie and do their own thing. Which they kind of do, and yet, kind of don't.

Ya see, the tale of Sleeping Beauty as shown in the 1959 film kind of sort of happened; Prince Phillip, the three fairies, a spinning wheel and that engrossing baddie still factor in here. But the villain this time around is Aurora's (Elle Fanning) father, King Stefan (Sharlto Copley). While it's great that Copley gets a major role like this (he more than deserves it!), he's a pale substitute for the original animated features antagonist. But replacing the original Maleficent with a dude that dresses up in Sauron's armor is the least of the films problems. No, the worst part of the entire film is in it's one instance of entirely remaking a scene from the original movie; the scene where Maleficent curses baby Aurora to enter into an eternal sleep.

The whole scene lacks the dramatic potency of the original, and while Jolie is at least allowed to spring to evil life here (the only time in the movie she's allowed to do so). Oh, and let's just say the way she exits the scene here is just anemic when compared to the original.  Now, when it comes to remakes, I tend to take the attitude of book-to-movie adaptations and allow these things to stand on their own. But when your copying your inspiration this much, and then fail this badly, it deserves to be noticed. Speaking of failing badly,  the character of Maleficent in her incarnation here, is perfectly pitiful. Gone is the Queen of All Evil who threw all the forces of Hell at Prince Phillip; she's pretty much a glorified babysitter here. See, that last plot point really sticks out to me, since just a year or two after cursing the child to die on her 16th birthday, she soon takes the kid under hew wing. Now look, I'm not a soulless monster, I'll even freely admit the first scene where Maleficent encounters Aurora is all kinds of adorable, but it doesn't make scenes for the character as we've come to know her thus far in this particular movie.

That high level of inconsistency that plagues the movie has a field day with the films action sequences, which are so close to being thrilling it's disgusting. In a terrible waste of cool looking fantasy creatures, an epic battle between man and the magical beasts Maleficent helps protect loses all of it's effectiveness since the battles are shot so incoherently. In an effort to make the fights as PG appropriate as possible, no stabbings, impaling or what have you can be shown. As you might imagine, this makes depicting an epic battle sequence extremely difficult and by the end of it all, it just becomes a dull mess.

At least the finale is staged a little more lucid, although all the good is melted away by one of the single most idiotic things I've seen depicted in a film of this financial caliber. It's befuddling how this particular moment, along with practically everything else from the inconsistent characters to the God-awful green screen to the 3D that makes sure you can't see anything that happens in the film, was thought to be acceptable in the slightest.