Reel Talk (Season 35 Part 1)

 

Hello everyone, Grant Holloway here, back with Reel Talk, a segment in which I try to play devil’s advocate and critic well-received movies and praise badly-received ones.

ThunderCats – Since When Is Hope a Weakness
Yes, the plot is classical, but you know what that describes ? Every muth that’s survived more than five minutes, but apparently archetypes are now a flaw. ThuderCats seemed to operate on myth logic and not on franchise logic, which made it refreshing for me, but critics didn’t agree.
Tara’s Wrath – The trilogy that fell in love with its own darkness
Does Tara’s Wrath actually say anything new or does it just execute the same thesis with better lighting ? The film has been praised as ferocious, hypnotic and classical yet contemporary, but strip away the atmosphere and what remains ? Sexual manipulation, power reversal, mutual destruction and fatal inevitability and we’ve been here before, twice. It played it too safe for me.

The Writer and the Film Star – A marriage of ideas, not comfort
Critics say it’s emotionally hollow, but what if that’s the point ? Thomas Vinterberg doesn’t make swooning romances, he makes autopsies. The film isn’t trying to convince you that Max and January are meant to be, it’s dissecting why they aren’t and why they can’t stop orbiting each other anyway. The most common complaint was that we never believed they loved each other. Maybe we’re not supposed to believe in a grand, cinematic love story, but just see two ambitious artists who were drawn to what the other symbolized, not who they actually were.

Thus Dreamed Zarathustra – Three hours of fog yelling “God is Dead”
The artists behind this movie were all in, but commitment isn’t clarity. It felt to me like a three-hour thesis screaming its brilliance into the void, utterly convinced of its own importance. In the end, the film doesn’t wrestle with Nietzsche’s contradictions. It canonizes him and turns philosophy into spectacle and madness into aesthetic poetry.

Zorro – Zorro without the swagger
Although not a bad film in its own right, I felt like this Zorro adaptation tried to reinvent the legendary outlaw into a symbol of resistance rather than a crowd-pleasing swashbuckler he’s known for, in large part thanks to Luna’s melancholy gravitas and that didn’t really click for me. Not every film needs to be profound, sometimes you just want to lay back and enjoy a light-hearted movie, you know?

The Punisher : Purgatory – It’s time to let Mel Gibson go
Personal feelings and past actions aside, I still have a hard time believing Mel Gibson in this role. Sure, he does the job well, but the man is pushing 70 ! The Punisher : Purgatory leaves no oxygen in the room. Every scene feels soaked in despair and cruelty. Perhaps sometimes too much isn’t enough ?

The Tick – A joke stretched to feature length
The Tick will have some die hard fans out there and while it’s certainly not a bad movie, once the novelty wears off, The Tick starts to feel less like a comedy adventure and more like a single joke being told for ninety minutes straight. Rob Riggle commits completely, but while funny at first, the joke begins circling the drain. Props to the team for doing a superhero movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously though!

Man of God – The weight of fate without the fire
Man of God clearly wants to be a serious film, lingering in silence with the characters starring into the distance. It trusts the audience to wrestle with big questions about faith, morality and identity. The problem is it trusts those silences a little too much. The protagonist felt to me like a symbol walking through the story rather than a person living inside it.

Dust Saint – The false prophet of A24 Westerns

This film felt more impressive to me in theory than in practice. The atmosphere is undeniable and the film maintains a steady sense of spiritual unease, but once the dust settles, you start noticing that very little actually happens. It’s built entirely on mood, it’s stalling rather than building and that’s the main thing I got out of that movie.

Spelljammer – Wildspace, mild execution
Spelljammer is too much too fast and too sparkly, but it still felt really long to me. The plot is like a bag of dice rolled, a lot of things happens, but none of them sticks. It spends so much time explaining spectacle that it forgets to explain stakes. Although it’s nice to see D&D get some big screen love and try to make it mainstream!

The Letter Never Sent – Ghosted by nostalgia
I actually quite enjoyed this movie, but the twist at the end ? It’s the cinematic equivalent of being ghosted by your own nostalgia. By revealing the entire love story was imagined, it turned two hours of longing into a bittersweet rug pull. Beautiful to look at, frustrating to live through.

Discovery – It’s Tom Holland, sorry

The cerebral thrill sounded like it was my cup of tea, but although the relentless moral debates and expository dialogue suffocated the story’s emotional core, I quite enjoyed the movie. However, I’m tired of people pretending Tom Holland is a good actor. He gets completely overshadowed by everyone else in the cast and it undermined the movie in my opinion

Blood and Glory – A Renaissance painting set on fire with a chainsaw
It’s full-on operatic bloodbath, undeniably spectacular, but the excessive nudity, drawn-out feasts and palace politics slow the momentum, leaving the character arcs and strategy undeveloped. It’s a historical epic that overwhelms the senses but underwhelms the mind, proving that style can’t always carry substance.

Running from the Spotlight - It’s better if you expect the trainwreck
If you go see this movie and expect an A24 drama, you’re going to be disappointed, but if you accept that this is a chaotic, messy teen drama, it gets better ! Maria is a magnificent trainwreck. It’s over the top, addictive and completely watchable, better than the 39/100 it received.

Unreasonable Doubt – A really chaotic Tinder date
It tries to wedge a rom-com into a murder trial and it ends up confused, uneven and occasionally cringe-worthy. The tonal whiplash between the different genres it tries to tackle is too much, but still I find myself weirdly enthralled by this movie.