Producer/host of Iconography podcast.
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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 2016
The film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is not funny.
Or at least it’s not any funnier than Pride and Prejudice, sans zombies, is. Jane Austen’s comedy of manners is not without a sense of humor. If Matt Smith is hamming it up as the pathetic Parson Collins (admittedly, Smith might go a bit far), and if Lena Headey’s haughty noblewoman or Sally Phillips’s overly-desperate matriarch seem out-of-touch or absurd, aren’t they all just taking stage notes from Ms. Austen…
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Star Wars: The Force Awakens 2015
I hope Daisy Ridley and John Boyega enjoyed their last few days of relativity anonymity, because they're cinema icons now. It says a lot that I could have said that about them an hour into this film, and still can't say that about Hayden Christensen. No matter how adequate Episode III is (and it is that), no matter how overblown prequel hate has gotten, I think it'd be hard to argue about this: we've crossed back into something for the ages.
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The Way Way Back 2013
The Way, Way Back is a classic summer film that hits you like a classic winter blizzard.
On the whole, it is smartly written, moving, and well-crafted, but it seems unbalanced - or specifically balanced too heavily towards its more dramatic elements. The moments of lightness in this film (a watergun fight, some hot-dogging on the water slide, a breakdance) seem crafted. Overly so. The heavier moments, on the other hand, feel honest, organic; you can tell they are the…
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Blue Ruin 2013
Paced deliberately at the outset, as it meanders its way into something approaching a revenge plot, the film seems like it could become a chore once star Macon Blair loses his absolute masterpiece of a scraggly man beard. He emerges from a shower looking suddenly to be the gentle dweeb his character truly is and the movie could lose all perceivable edge. Who wants to see a revenge film enacted by a sensitive soul with watery eyes and a dress…