No one’s happier than I am after hearing from Edwin Catmull that Pixar has recommitted itself to original films. To sum up, Catmull stated that Pixar’s current strategy is to release an original film every year, while releasing a sequel/prequel/etc. every other year. For example, Bob Peterson’s The Good Dinosaur, an original film, is coming out in 2014. […]
Is Story Still King? An Examination of Pixar’s Future
Among the fabled Pixar legends, which include the “Black Friday” Toy Story reel, the cancelled Newt project, and the reason why Cars 2 exists, there is the story of one quietly life-changing lunch. In 1994, a year before Toy Story came out and birthed the digital animation craze, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and […]
Film Icons Step Into the Limelight for 2013
2012 was a landmark year in many ways. With the release of The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Amazing Spider-Man, the industry saw the true power of the superhero genre as it established itself as the new Hollywood mainstay. Indie comedies like Safety Not Guaranteed and Your Sister’s Sister ruled the underground, while […]
Roger Ebert Changed My Life With Butter and Salt
I was in the midst of learning to run an enzyme-linked immuno sorbent assay (ELISA) when I heard the news about Roger Ebert’s passing. And if I am being completely honest, it shattered me. The nation had lost one of its best writers, the industry had lost a giant, and I had lost my North Star. […]
Stanley Kubrick: Iconographic King
An elevator door opens to reveal a river of blood. A bone tossed into the sky by a monkey becomes a space station. A young droog kicks and beats an old man to the tune of Singin’ in the Rain. A crazed aircraft commander rides a nuclear bomb like a rodeo cowboy. An over-the-top drill […]
Søren and J’s Oscarcast 2013
If you were following us on Twitter (and you should be), you’ve already seen bits and pieces of thoughts from the Movie Fail staff on this year’s Oscars ceremony this past Sunday. In this podcast, Josh and I cover everything from the Rhythm and Hues protests to Seth MacFarlane as we discuss the event. Give […]
Five Movies With Bad Sequels
We’ve all seen them: movie sequels that never should have been made. The original movie was great, so when the sequel comes out, you think, “Hey, why not? The first one was good, so I’ll give it a shot.” And then you watch it, falling into a trap that has been catching moviegoers since the […]
Five Films to Cuddle Up With
As you may or may not have heard, I am now officially a film correspondent for The Massachusetts Daily Collegian. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I was asked to create a multimedia presentation for the paper. Below you will find the fruits of my labor: five excellent films you and your significant other can […]
On Abrams, Star Wars and Episode VII
After rumors started really picking up about the next director of the Star Wars franchise, Disney released a statement officially confirming that J.J. Abrams, director of the 2009 reboot of Star Trek and the more recent Super 8, will head up Episode VII. So the guy who successfully resurrected an old science fiction show has been assigned to another […]
Steve’s Ten Most Anticipated Movies of 2013
Making a list of films I anticipate for the coming year almost never works. I always wind up finding more films that I’m dying to see, and sometimes forget about the ones that I originally planned to watch. I saw over one hundred films that were released last year and I only estimated I’d see […]
Ari’s Top Ten Movies of 2012
This was my first year as a fully-enrolled film student. Sometimes I worry becoming a filmmaker will make it harder to enjoy movies as a filmgoer. Thankfully, I haven’t become a bitter old quite hack yet; there were some movies I got really excited about this past year. So without further ado, here are ten […]
Five Movie Fails for 2012
Sometimes movies are just plain bad, as we well know. But in this author’s humble opinion, seeing the films that we wanted so badly to like crash and burn is much, much worse. Here’s a list of five films that were nowhere near as good as they should have been, making them the biggest disappointments […]
Should You See The Hobbit at 48 FPS?
I had the good fortune to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at the midnight premiere in 48 frames per second. So as a follow-up to Ari’s review of the 2D 24 frames per second version of the film, and to my post from earlier this year about the negative CinemaCon reaction the first screening of the footage, here is a […]
Cloud Atlas and Life of Pi
Cloud Atlas and Life of Pi are two films based on novels which critics and fans alike initially considered “unfilmable.” Audience reception so far has shown those critics to be dead wrong. For those of you looking to get your fantasy adventure movie fix this weekend, Zack Mandell of Movie Room Reviews has got you covered […]
Who Is The Master?
I have heard several different evaluations from my peers of Paul Thomas Anderson’s most recent film, The Master; from staunch support to outright dismissal, opinions certainly seem divided. But as someone who was not anticipating The Master with any great excitement, I came away pleasantly surprised. Because of this, I feel that I should illustrate why the film deserves a […]
Nausicaä of the Desert of the Real
This piece examines the thematic relationship between Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and the Wachowski siblings’ The Matrix. Needles to say, beware of spoilers. In 1984, one year before the founding of the legendary Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki’s first major directorial effort was released. Nausicaä of the Valley of […]
A New Hope for Genre Designation
Since 1977, there has been an epic battle raging between two of the biggest franchises in popular culture. Fans of Star Trek fans and Star Wars have been at each other’s throats for years, periodically culminating in films like Kyle Newman’s farcical road trip flick Fanboys, but I have never understood why; from what I can tell, the only thing the […]
The Midlife Crisis of 1999
If you ask someone what American Beauty, Fight Club, The Matrix, Office Space, The Boondock Saints, and Being John Malkovich have in common, they’ll probably either say they have no idea, or they’ll stare at you for a moment before walking off in a daze. Given some time to think, though, it becomes clear that […]
Superheroes Don’t Need to be Antiheroes
I once again find myself at odds with one of Roger Ebert’s Far-Flung Correspondents. Omer Mozaffar recently wrote an article entitled “The Dark Knight Rises, an American genre falls,” which you can read here. I wrote this piece in direct response to Mr. Mozaffar. This was a very astute assessment of the Dark Knight trilogy – Mr. Mozaffar succinctly summarized the […]
Understanding Take Shelter
I really liked Take Shelter. As a drama it succeeded in building an emotional bridge between the audience and its characters, and as a thriller it kept the audience guessing about the sanity of its protagonist. The ending of Take Shelter is also well-crafted and multilayered, and is deftly executed by writer/director Jeff Nichols. However, this complexity also leads us […]
Revisiting Superman Returns
It was supposed to be a spectacular film. After a 19-year hiatus, Superman was making his triumphant return to the big screen for a new generation. Warner Brothers had given the project a 300-million-dollar budget, and Bryan Singer, riding a wave of adoration for his brilliant handling of X-Men 2, was directing. Not being a […]
Finding Nemo Is the Saddest Story Ever
When Finding Nemo was released in 2003, a ten-year-old version of me thought it was a wonderfully funny little film. Even back then I was always looking for things to complain about and I remember telling my mother that the movie had suffered because trailers had spoiled many of the best gags. However, I know […]
This Guy is Awesome
I love it when nerds do something creative with their time. So about a week ago, after seeing The Avengers, I found this awesome little clip online of some serious Iron Man cosplaying: It was brought to my attention that the guy who created the costume has in fact worked on recreating many of the other […]
The Avengers is Assembled Well-Enough
My friend Josh Rosenfield over on Popcorn Culture recently wrote a critique of The Avengers. While it was a well-written analysis, it was, shall we say, somewhat less favorable than I was with my review. I felt that the points I wanted to make into rebuttal to that post were too much for a comment, so I decided to […]
Superheroes Are Not In Decline
One of Roger Ebert’s “Far Flung Correspondents,” Michael Mirasol, recently wrote an article entitled The rise and decline of the superhero. It’s a very interesting and well-written piece, and even includes a video essay to accompany the text. However, I cannot say that my views totally gel with Mr. Mirasol’s assessments. I think it’s always […]
The Hobbit at 48 FPS
Update Peter Jackson has offered a short rebuttal to criticisms of the new format: “At first it’s unusual because you’ve never seen a movie like this before. It’s literally a new experience, but you know, that doesn’t last the entire experience of the film; not by any stretch, after 10 minutes or so. That’s a […]
Termite Terrace Trounces the Mouse House
Walt Disney Animation and the Warner Bros. Animation are longtime rivals who sported very different philosophies when it came animation. The stalwart, good heartedness of Disney’s shorts stood in contrast to the wild, nihilistic nature of Warner’s universe. Their respective facilities, business outlooks, and differing collections of talent and staff infrastructure all lent to two […]
The Problem with Tomas Alfredson
I would be the first to call Tomas Alfredson a perfect director; someone who hits every possible emotional note in his films, whose impeccable timing offers the viewer a spectacular sense of pace and mood. So why, then, are reviews for his films still fairly mixed? Why, with a film as sound as Tinker Tailor […]
The Case Against Episode I
This article is a direct response to “In Defense of Star Wars: Episode I” by Joey Esposito, which can be found here on IGN. I would like to thank Mr. Esposito for inspiring me to write this op-ed. Before I begin, I would like to make it clear that this op-ed is not an attack on […]
Søren’s Most Anticipated Films of 2012
Ari’s Most Anticipated Films of 2012
The world isn’t supposed to end until December 2012, right? Plenty of time to go to the movies. Here’s a list of my most anticipated films of 2012: 10. Django Unchained Tarantino’s latest. The film’s a Spaghetti Western revenge plot about a freed slave, but it gets a spot on this list for its cast alone, […]
Tim’s Top Ten Favorite Films
Søren’s Top Ten Favorite Films
At Movie Fail, we feel that it is important for every semi-serious filmgoer to have at least an idea of their top favorite movies. Why? Well, while a favorites list is purely subjective, it does help others better understand your film tastes. By isolating the cinema that you most enjoy watching or that you most […]
