Bold Wurg

Phillip K. Dick may be more responsible for the tenor and tone of cinematic sci-fi than any other sci-fi great, even as many of the films lack the depth of the source material. That doesn’t mean they aren’t fun. For a case in point, check out my review of Total Recall for Paste.

I remember, when I watched The Dark Knight, thinking how terminal, or “end of career” the battle with the Joker felt. This wasn’t one of the many skirmishes between Batman and his arch-foe—instead it felt like a culmination minus anything having gone before. Then along comes The Dark Knight Rises. Accused by many of just being a remake of Batman Begin (justly), I just found it more fascinating for how it featured a clash of two opposing story arc chronologies. You can read my review for Paste here.

I don’t what I expected—maybe at least a cool visual or two I could insert in my mental “perfect Spider-Man collage” (sort of like “best James Bond moments”). Regardless of what I hoped for—here’s my review for Paste on what I found.

There is much to enjoy with the new Pixar film—and enough un-Pixar-like fumbles, however small, to cause at least a smidge of concern. Regardless, it’s gorgeous, and a treatment of this aspect of the mother-daughter relationship, so common in real life, is long overdue.My review for Paste, found here.

In the midst of the barrage of fabled content (Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror, Mirror, ABC’s Once Upon a Time, etc.), I yearn for Bill Willingham’s Fables to make it onscreen somewhere, somehow. Nonetheless, my review for Paste.

As my review for Paste shows, I had a blast seeing the comic book team dynamic finally captured on the Big Screen. Some personal context that I couldn’t really go into in the review proper: I collected comic books actively from age 5 to about 19, sporadically till about 25 and still “catch up” on story arcs using collected editions in bookstores and the Marvel iPad app. I LOVE the classic battle of a team of superheroes versus a team of villains. Granted, this isn’t the Avengers versus the Masters of Evil or the Zodiac or such, but it at least captures one side of the equation (whereas the X-Men movies, though featuring two teams, rarely featured the cooperative activity of its members, let alone two sides of cooperative action pitted against each other).