Posts categorized “Movies”

Face to face in secret places, feel the chill…

The fact that they released a brand-new James Bond theme a couple of weeks ago plus the news that they decided to delay the new Bond flick until Fall has got me thinking quite a bit about James Bond themes. So here’s one of my all-time favorites. Partake and be pleasured by the 80s blacklight goodness:

You have now been pleasured.

We had each other. That’s how we won…

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) ★★★½

Directed by JJ Abrams

I have a confession: I’m not really a Star Wars fan. I can’t be a Star Wars fan. Why not? Because I actually like Star Wars. Pretty much all of it. I love the prequels. I liked the original Clone Wars movie before it became a series. I loved, loved, loved Episode VIII. I enjoy all of these things as fun, slightly silly, Saturday-morning fare for kids that can sometimes skew slightly adult. Therefore I can’t be a true Star Wars fan, because I don’t nit-pick the damned thing to death. As such: I really, really enjoyed Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. More… »

Fool me once, fool me twice…

There’s a new James Bond movie coming out this year! And that means there’s a new James Bond theme song. This is all rather exciting for me; I’m a bit of a James Bond aficionado. The Bond films were my go-to comfort films in my teens and early twenties. I’m also a connoisseur of Bond theme songs. If you meet me at a party, you could ask me to recite the title and artist of all the Bond themes in chronological order and I could probably do it.

Bond themes are a fascinating genre of music all their own. There are a few clunkers (*cough* Quantum of Solace *cough*), but they’ve also produced some of my favorite songs of all time (*cough* Skyfall *cough*). There’s also fun side-branch of secondary Bond themes: original songs that appear either during the movies themselves (á la the Pretenders song “Where Has Everybody Gone” in The Living Daylights) or alternate theme songs played over the end credits (á la k.d. lang’s excellent Tomorrow Never Dies alternate song “Surrender”).

But I digress. As you can see I can go on and on about Bond minutiae.

For No Time to Die, the 25th Bond film, they’ve roped in up-and-coming dark-pop musician Billie Eilish and her producer/brother Finneas O’Connell. The two are apparently as much fans of Bond as I am. Here is the result—partake and be pleasured:

Y’know what? I quite like it! It fits in the progression of the latter half of Daniel Craig bond films, Skyfall and SPECTRE. In fact it has a lot in common with Sam Smith’s “The Writing’s on the Wall” from the latter film. “No Time to Die” is darkly lush, a song ultimately about betrayal and defeat (which seems to fit what little we’ve seen of the film from its trailers). There are some great moments: the wet, Bond-ian brass that creeps into the background for a moment around the 1-minute mark; the guitar that comes in on the chorus about 1:35; the full orchestration that starts building up around the two-minute mark. In all it’s a great variation of a “building” song, where over time more and more elements seep into the initially sparse presentation. But “No Time to Die” is interesting in that it undercuts moments of possible cathartic crescendo, like the way Eilish hits the climactic high-note about 3:20, only to slide down into a lower note before it ends, as if resigned to defeat. And then all the building cuts out and the song ends as sparsely and darkly as it began.

Am I reading too much into it? Probably. But it is well done. I hope you have been pleasured by it.

Into the unknown…

Frozen II (2019): ★★★½

Directed by Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee

Frozen II is a good movie. Is it as good as the first Frozen (which is also a good movie)? I’m actually not entirely certain. But it is at least as good. Spoilers abound!

More… »

He’s baa-aaaaack…

Avengers: Endgame (2019) ★★★½

Directed by the Russo Bros.

Endgame is good! I don’t think it works quite as successfully as Infinity War did, and there are a couple of very poorly-done things, but for the most part it’s exciting, frikkin’ hilarious, and satisfying. Spoilers ahoy! More… »

Marvelous… simply marvelous…

So the next big Marvel Movie will be Captain Marvel, coming out sometime next month (I can’t be bothered to look up the exact release date right now). I’m very excited for this movie! And it’s always great when a movie has a fantastic website to help get you hype.

One thing about Captain Marvel is that it takes place in the 1990s. And some very smart people in Marvel marketing decided it would be extremely awesome to create a website that looked like it came from the 1990s. And they were absolutely correct. IT IS GLORIOUS. It’s like someone had consumed all of Geocities and held it in too long, and when the opportunity came they just vomited it ALL out all over the internets. Animated GIFs. Poorly-digitized pictures. Comic Sans. Unnecessarily long scroll. An idiotic “game” you can play. Broken images. A guestbook. A trailer that plays in a tiny little box. Clashing, psychedelic backgrounds and incoherent color schemes. It’s all spot-on, heightened to 1,000%. I larb it.

Just in case you’re reading this at some unspecified point in the future when this website is no longer its current awexome self, I’ve taken taken an image capture of the entire site below. Click to enlarge it. You shan’t regret it!

Do, please click to enlarge. You shan’t regret it.

These guys…

Ant Man & the Wasp (2018): ★★★

Ant Man & the Wasp is pretty much the epitome of a three-star movie. It’s fun, breezy, exciting, and hilarious, but never earth-shattering. You won’t come out of it a better person, or wanting to be a better person, or still gasping in amazement at the things you saw on the screen. You will have a good time, though. More… »