Barbenheimer, Part One: “Barbie,” Robbie, and the Beauty of Reality

Barbenheimer, Part One: “Barbie,” Robbie, and the Beauty of Reality

I’m a couple of weeks late to the party, and what a couple of weeks they have been! Coming out of COVID, we had two certified “The Movies are Back!” blockbusters in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Top Gun: Maverick. But we really had not had a huge cultural moment in the movie world…until now. The twin openings of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer truly took the entertainment world by storm. Prior to their opening, no two movies had ever each grossed more than $80 million in the same opening weekend. Barbie’s domestic opening of $155 million and Oppenheimer’s $82 million led to the fourth biggest box office weekend of all time (behind the two Avengers Infinity Saga movies and Star Wars: The Force Awakens). Together, they cleared half a billion dollars worldwide in three days. And, to make it all the better, they are both very good movies. So let’s review them both. We’ll start with the pink-painted juggernaut that is Barbie.

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2023 Movie Preview: Part Two

2023 Movie Preview: Part Two

We’ve made it halfway through 2023. In the first half of the year, we got to see a couple of animated juggernauts (The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), a hit and a miss from the folks at Marvel (Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), some strong sequels (John Wick: Chapter 4, Creed III), and some selling out of our childhood memories (The Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). But now it’s time to get serious. The rest of the summer gives us some of the most-anticipated summer releases of the year. Then, we move into awards seasons as the studios and distributors start to slowly squeeze out their Oscar-bait starting with the fall festivals. Finally, we hit the holiday movie season with its mix of big event titles and the most prestigious of prestige films…at least that’s what the studios are counting on. What should you see? A little of each. Let’s break it down by month.

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An Even Better Spider-Man? You’ll Find Him “Across the Spider-Verse”

An Even Better Spider-Man? You’ll Find Him “Across the Spider-Verse”

In 1977, Star Wars came out and changed so much about the way that we not only watched, but thought of movies. We were thrilled by a great story (even if it was borrowed from an old Kurosawa movie) and by immediately intriguing characters. But the thing that truly dazzled us were the special effects. We saw things on screen that we never dreamed we would see in such a believable way. And, of course, it became the biggest movie of all time. Then, in 1980, The Empire Strikes Back came out. While the technical achievements were still breathtaking, what made Empire at least the equal of Star Wars, if not superior, was the emotional depth of the story. The deepening of Han and Luke’s friendship, the burgeoning relationship with Han and Leia, the show-stopping reveal of the relationship between Luke and Darth Vader–all of this gave us the same things we loved about the first movie, but raised emotional stakes that not only thrilled us, but touched us. And that’s what truly great second chapters in cinema stories do: they build on an incredible first act and take us deeper into that universe’s heart through the heart of its characters.

By this standard, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a truly great second chapter of a cinema story. Like Star Wars, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse thrilled us on a previously unimagined technical level. While comic-book stories coming to life has been the lifeblood of the movie business for over a decade now, the feeling of actual comic books coming to life was just out of reach until Into the Spider-Verse re-established what animation could look like and feel like…at least on the visceral level. The Miles Morales as Spider-Man origin story–with numerous other Spideys along for the fight–instantaneously became one of the greatest animated films of all time. And then, by keeping the same creative flair but injecting a lot more emotional stakes, Across the Spider-Verse did what Empire did for Star Wars decades ago (or what The Godfather, Part II did a little earlier or what Terminator 2: Judgment Day did a little later): it made it even better.

(Fair warning: mild spoilers will follow).

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We Have a Winner!

We Have a Winner!

A big thank you to those who subscribed to the blog over the last week! And congratulations to new subscriber J.B. Huffman, who won our Dazed and Confused Criterion Collection Blu Ray giveaway! You can check out J.B.’s thoughts on movies on his podcast, Manly Movies (Apple ; Spotify). And keep following here for all of my thoughts on film as we head into the big summer movie season.

Alright, Alright, Alright…: The Top 5 Characters from “Dazed and Confused”

Alright, Alright, Alright…: The Top 5 Characters from “Dazed and Confused”

It’s the end of the school year. For me, that seems like a perfect time to revisit Richard Linklater’s epic salute to the last day of school, Dazed and Confused. On top of that, Dazed is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Lots of words have been spilled about this true classic coming-of-age-ish tale, about the big splash it made for Linklater, and about the myriad stars whose careers blossomed from it. I don’t know that me doing a review of it would make that big a contribution to that body of reviews. So instead, I’m going to highlight the best part of the movie for me–its panorama of characters portraying and occasionally subverting high-school types–and have some fun revisiting the film by counting down my five favorite characters. I hope you’ll think it’s fun, too!

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“Air” is a Breezy Good Time

“Air” is a Breezy Good Time

Confession time: I wasn’t a fan of Michael Jordan during his playing career. I was a fan of the late 80s-early 90s “Bad Boys” Pistons and Jordan and the Bulls were the hated rivals. I never quite got over that. So, naturally, I never had any interest in obtaining a pair of Air Jordans. So, a few decades later, could I find a movie about the creation of the Air Jordan to be a worthwhile watch? Thanks to a great cast, a streamlined script, and an “air” of not taking itself too seriously, the answer is, “Absolutely.” For a movie about product marketing, Air is a lot of fun.

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Goodbye to the “Guardians”

Goodbye to the “Guardians”

Guardians of the Galaxy is not only still my favorite movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but, when it came out, it was one of my favorite films of 2014 (part of a Chris Pratt one-two punch with The Lego Movie). Director and co-writer James Gunn and company made a movie that still fit well in the MCU and its CGI-powered spectacle, but also gave us characters that we could really care about because they came to care about each other. While Volume 2 was…not my favorite, that and the Infinity Saga Avengers movies gave us more time to spend with this ragtag, irreverent group of “heroes.” Now, with Gunn heading up the DC film universe and some of the stars saying that they are done, we have now reached what appears to be the end of the Guardians, at least in this form. And, while it’s not a great film, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 still gives us the humor, emotion, and great soundtrack that has made this found family of castoffs worth watching in the first place.

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The Pieces Fly Fast in “Tetris”

The Pieces Fly Fast in “Tetris”

This past week, The Super Mario Bros. Movie crossed the one billion dollar worldwide box-office threshold and has more than doubled the take of the the #2 movie of the year, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. It’s easily the best-performing movie based on video game of all time. And while I enjoyed it, I just saw a 2023 video-game themed movie that I liked even better. With a fantastic lead performance by Taron Egerton (Rocketman) and a breakneck pace that just seems to get faster and faster the more you play…err, watch, Apple’s Tetris is almost as much fun as the game itself.

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Win Your Oscar Pool! – Part Three: The “Other” Awards

Win Your Oscar Pool! – Part Three: The “Other” Awards

For those of you who go to the best Oscar parties or enter the toughest prediction contests, you may have to pick from some of the categories filled with more obscure titles like “Best International Feature” or “Best Live Action Short Film.” I’ve got you. These are the categories where the films are almost always (but, as you will see, not always always) excluded from the feature film categories. They don’t necessarily go together except that they are the “other” categories. But either you need to know them to make your picks or you need to know that I really do know what I’m talking about. Either way, here we go. I’ll do these in order from the most likely for you to have seen them to, “Why do they have a category for these?”

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