Author: Thomas Ricard

Movie Review / Movies / Text
· by · Sep 20, 2018

The Happytime Murders (2018)

In 1988, Who Framed Roger Rabbit didn’t just revolutionize animation with its seamless insertion of wacky cartoon animation into a majority of its live-action shots; it subtly satirized Hollywood’s own history through a hard-boiled noir plot with a novel premise:…
Movie Review / Movies / Text
· by · Jan 10, 2017

Movies that Predicted Trump: All the King’s Men (1949)

History time, kids! Once upon a time, in a magical land of wealth and opportunity commonly known as the US of A lived a humble country lawyer named Huey P. Long. The nation had just emerged as one of the victors of a bloody World War and was going through an exciting period of technological progress and prosperity, blissfully unaware of the looming Wall Street crash and the ensuing Great Depression.
Movies / Text
· by · Dec 13, 2016

Does Star Wars really need the Jedi?

The prospect of watching Rogue One---apparently the very first Star Wars film without any Jedi or Force-sensitives among its main characters---becomes all the more exciting. How will the protagonists solve their problems without the help of Force powers? More importantly, how could the absence of any Jedi in a Star Wars film affect the series’ good-versus-evil narrative?
Movie Review / Movies / Text
· by · Dec 8, 2016

Movies that Predicted Trump: Bulworth (1998)

Breaking all rules of political etiquette, a candidate starts behaving outrageously, offending sensibilities with outlandish racially-tinged comments and unhinged acts of buffoonery. Sounds familiar, right? Except the year is not 2015 or 2016 but 1996, and the man in question is a fictional liberal Democrat named Jay Billington Bulworth.
Movies / Text
· by · Oct 10, 2016

5 steps to make the Lion King remake work

Regardless of any personal misgivings I may have with Disney’s remake enterprise, even the worst ideas can be turned into good movies. So in the unlikely event that Jon Favreau may be reading this, here are five steps I would recommend him to take to make his Lion King roar.
Movie Review / Movies / Text
· by · Sep 15, 2016

The Green Inferno (2015): Eli Roth's politically incorrect cannibal holocaust

It may not be one of the best film posters ever designed, but there’s no denying its eloquence: Surrounded by green leaves and thick roots, a severed human hand lies on the ground. In the grip of its bloody fingers, an iPhone displays Twitter’s latest trends: #JungleGate, #ACTnowUN, #SocialJusticeForAll, #NativeLivesMatter, and #IndigenousLivesMatter...
Movie Review / Movies / Text
· by · Sep 7, 2016

Lights Out (2016)

It’s an experience I’m sure we’re all familiar with. It’s the middle of the night and you’ve just snuck out of your room for a quick snack. Everyone else is asleep, so you move carefully so as not to wake anyone up---yet every step you take is done in quick tippy-toe sprints, just so you don’t have to stay in the dark too long...
Movie Review / Movies / Text
· by · Jun 6, 2016

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

“The film succeeds not because it deconstructs or challenges the base assumptions about sex and masculinity that most such comedies take for granted—in fact, it does neither of those things—but because it understands where they come from.”
Movies / Text
· by · Apr 20, 2016

Why we will always love survival movies

“Instead of being a stage for interpersonal conflict and contrasting approaches to problem-solving, the inhospitable setting becomes a kind of all-powerful God dictating the conditions and restrictions of both story and shooting.”
Movie Review / Movies / Text
· by · Apr 5, 2016

High-Rise (2015)

Tom Hiddleston stars in the long-delayed adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s darkly comical class warfare allegory in which a tower block’s problems with power failures, nocturnal disturbances, and petty neighbor disputes escalate into all-out tribal warfare.
Movies / Text
· by · Aug 6, 2015

Kill James Bond

“Daniel Craig’s Bond carries a considerably larger burden of expectations than his predecessors ever did. To that problem, I submit the following solution: Kill James Bond.”

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