As others have pointed out, this movie is basically just an excuse to have some of the top names in martial arts action do fights - certainly the plot is remarkably dumb before one of the principals attempts an infiltration-of-the-baddies which makes absolutely no sense.

That said, a movie where the basic point is "Tony Jaa, Tiger Chen and Iko Uwais do fights" is still gonna be pretty good, because all of those people are good at fights, and then…

Only a few times manages to transcend its stage play origins: this is what it is, a very straightforward adaptation of a stage play, and you either are fine with that or you aren't. I, for the record, am mostly okay with it but wish they had made more of an effort to use the advantages film provides - a scripts where so much of the monologuing is narrated flashback is one where film has some natural advantages and by…

I know some people will be leery of this because there's a lot of white-saviourish stuff hanging around the film (which is inevitable because it's based on a true story, and that true story is about a white teacher from southern Canada introducing afterschool lacrosse to an Inuit community and the success of that program). But what's remarkable about the movie is how hard it constantly pushes back against the white saviour narrative. The script allows Ben Schnetzer's prepbro teacher…

A triumph from pillar to post, Into the Spider-Verse is so improbable a success - an animated Spider-Man movie from a studio that has consistently fucked up both animated movies and Spider-Man movies based on a comic-nerdily dense idea that should be impenetrable to ninety-nine percent of the viewing audience - that it is hard to call it anything other than "remarkable," but that feels unfair simply because it is so good that just going with "remarkable" feels like giving…