As the title suggests, so forth.
Some people are never happy
I remember vividly some people moaning about Inception, and claiming that because it didn’t have wildly explicit sex it was invalid as an exploration of dreams. The film that should have made oodles of money in their eyes was Vanishing Waves a couple of years later which had lashings of nudity. Fast forward to this summer, Nolan surprises everyone with an R rating, and wildly explicit sex (for him), and these people … moan about him not showing the bomb dropping on the Japanese. You cannot win. If complaining is both a valid method and a criteria for criticism then, pffft. Somebody will always have something to complain about regarding anything and everything.
Warners, get your Gunn
This is the way the Snyderverse ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Why did The Flash, Blue Beetle and (it looks likely) Aquaman 2 all bomb? There are various reasons, but I’m fairly sure James Gunn canning the entire DCEU before any of these films had been released sure helped. Was he seriously unaware of the doom loop noted on Netflix where cancelling shows without a resolution makes people hesitant to commit to new shows lest they go nowhere leading to a doom loop whereby they are also cancelled? Again, it is worth noting the power law that applies to American cinema. You could lose 47% of your box office takings by alienating just 11% of cinemagoers. And those cinemagoers are the ones plugged in; hyper aware that Gunn had cancelled Wonder Woman 3 with Gal Gadot and prevented Henry Cavill returning as Superman while committing to continuing his wife’s Harcourt character into the new DCU. Alienate this group at your peril…
Last Orders in Soho
It seems likely now that Last Night in Soho was not just the swansong of the late Diana Rigg but also the final film of her fellow 1960s icon Terence Stamp. Which is a terrible disappointment, because director Edgar Wright shamefully wasted both of their talents on his misguided time-travel horror. I was excited to see this movie before Covid scuppered its release, but when I finally caught up with it on Netflix in the company of fellow Avengers devotee The Engineer it was a huge let down. For all the world it seemed like Wright had gone down the same rabbit hole as Tarantino had just before him – assuming everyone has seen as many obscure 1960s films as he has. Wright, from interviews, seems to believe he was interrogating the attitudes of 1960s films that were beloved and problematic. Actually he’s preaching about God knows what in films that nobody’s seen in fifty years, and then wondering why we aren’t responding to his homily.
Talking Movies 