Movies

Six years ago, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 was released in theaters, eventually earning $869 million dollars in global box office revenue. Why is that important? Well, if you need me to tell you how the world has changed in the last six years, you’re probably not six years old yet and aren’t scouring the internet for film reviews. 2023 is a very different world from 2017, and yet  Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 feels like a pre-COVID Marvel Cinematic Universe movie should. It’s laugh out loud funny, heart-wrenchingly touching, brilliantly soundtracked, and leaves you wanting more. Spoiler alert: we likely will not see this version of the Guardians on screen again, due in no small part to director James Gunn’s recent appointment as Creative Director of DC Studios.

If you look at history, you will notice war as one of the most iconic events that most people cannot seem to forget. Although for some this might seem like a sadistic approach towards human psychology, in real life war is indeed a fascinating topic that has changed the course of history.

Modern society is deeply influenced by the events that happened during the war, in fact, it was reshaped.

SUPER MARIO BROS. was highly criticized the moment Chris Pratt was announced to voice the title character. Then, on cue, the movie was review-bombed on Rotten Tomatoes and was declared “Rotten” according to the critic reviews. So if the critics and the fans both declared the movie dead on arrival, how did it 1UP the criticism?

There was more riding on this movie being a success than a skill check on a door riddled with traps. And much like any skill check, the result was uncertain at its launch.

Few tragedies, if any, surpass the loss of a loved one. Persistent, traumatic grief can lead even the stoutest of souls into a benighted cycle of despair, and when that loss comes abruptly through accidents, violence, sudden illness or suicide, the emotional shock inflicts the most heinous of tolls upon survivors. Much has been written about the actual shape grieving takes; the popularly known ‘Five Stages of Grief’, more precisely called the Kübler-Ross model (and originally based on observations of terminally ill patients facing their own imminent deaths), is a passage through various phases that lead an individual to the acknowledgment of their new, unasked-for reality: denial, bargaining, anger, depression and, ultimately, acceptance.

Oh, the horror anthology. As a cinematic sub-genre its roots lie not in film, but the pulpy realm of classic mid-20th century comic books. Those garish rags of cheap newsprint and lurid covers cast a spell on many a 1950’s child, the undisputed king of which was EC Comics, whose gasp! choke! style of bloody bite-sized morality plays filled such titles as The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, Shock SuspenStories and, most notoriously, Tales From the Crypt, which inspired the equally-infamous latter-day HBO television show of the same name.

Marvel’s Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is the latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the 31st film to be exact. It’s a film that might get the accolades that Marvel might be expecting, but that doesn’t mean that director Peyton Reed has concocted a dud. Taken on its own merits and considering what Marvel’s movie maestro Kevin Feige needed the film to do, it’s entertaining and sets up the next phase of the bigger MCU picture quite well. It also serves to underline just how incredible of an undertaking the MCU actually is and how even the grandest concepts can start to bow under their own weight.

Twenty-first century children are becoming more tech-savvy at a younger age than at any point in history. Yet the constant exposure to smartphones, tablets, social media and online video game platforms can and does have detrimental effects on childhood development. Eye strain, obesity, reduced sleep quality, increased feelings of inadequacy and anxiety, depression, cyberbullying, poor face-to-face social skills and an over-reliance on search bars and web browsers to glean information have all been cited as negative factors of the digital age in pediatric studies.

Another year has come and gone, and it's time to look back once more to determine what the prior year brought us that was good. Critical Blast will be taking votes now through the end of January 2023 for you, our readers. to make your voice known as to what you thought was the best in movies, television, and comics. You're not limited to the nominations -- we leave an opening in every category for you to put in the title or name that you think is best suited to each category.

So make your selections. Share with your friends. Campaign for your favorites. We will tabulate the votes in February and place the order for the trophy medallions (yes, the winner in each catalog gets a physical trophy, not just online bragging rights, so your vote will actually mean something tangible).

This week sees the release of WB's Black Adam to the HBO Max streaming service, something which I've been looking forward to seeing ever since the post-credit scene was leaked from theaters to the Internet.

Dwayne Johnson takes the role of the titular Black Adam, a precursor to Captain Marvel (the original one, who says "Shazam") by about 5000 years. In the comics, Teth Adam was selected by the wizards to weild the power of their champion, but the power corrupted him and they imprisoned him. In this 2022 film adaptation, the story gets a tweak which is important to the plot so I won't detail it here for those who have yet to see the film. It's an acceptable twist, and it helps make the character be a little more understandable.

In the old (and current, for that matter) Hollywood order, any path towards bringing a script to completion followed a very narrow and arduous trail through an inflexible system concerned not with creative expression but the All-Mighty Box Office Return. Simple, dumbed-down affairs that appeal to the lowest common denominator and widest possible audience is continually favored over individualistic celluloid statements meant to provoke genuine emotion or thought. How many times has the complaint arisen that major studios crank out soulless, CGI-bolstered popcorn blockbusters to the detriment of true artistic vision? Yet the world of independent cinema has its own pitfalls: limited time, money and resources coupled with a lack of name actors presents a marketing mountain that can prove daunting to effectively climb. A solid concept, therefore, provides the surest route to winning an audience's allegiance.

(photo credit: Ryan Snaadt)

Modern day life is transversally moved by video, from social media platforms and their “challenges”, to the fact that most of our entertainment comes from movies and series, everything has something to do with audiovisual production. And in such context it´s only natural that more and more people are trying to create their own movies, with their personal style, and without the need to have a mega production from Hollywood behind them, just an idea and a digital camera, or even a good phone.

While other sequels and adaptations have been attempted for Jean Shepherd's classic "A Christmas Story," it took nearly forty years for the original cast to grow into the parts necessary for a true-to-spirit continuation to the story.

Peter Billingsley returnas as Ralph Parker, along with Scott Schwartz as Flick, RD Robb as Schwartz, and Zack Ward as Scut Farkus. Ralph and his family -- wife Sandy (Erinn Hayes) and kids Mark (River Drosche) and Julie (Julianna Layne) -- are preparing the house for Christmas and waiting for the arrival of grandma and grandpa. But when Ralph gets the phone call from his mother that the Old Man has passed, plans get changed, and Christmas gets relocated to Hohman, Indiana -- which hasn't changed a lick since the 1940s.

If you follow the Marvel Cinematic Universe closely enough, you'll see stories on the internet about some big shot director or another complaining about how MCU maestro Kevin Fiege takes away the director's freedom to tell the tale they wanted to tell. These directors typically are not and have never been attached to an MCU movie and probably are just whining because their features haven't come close to what a typical Marvel movie does at the box office. They also must not be watching Ryna Coogler's Black Panther films, because the first film, starring the late great Chadwick Boseman, was a revelation both in terms of the MCU and African American pop culture. WIthin days if not hours of the first film's release in 2018, video testimonials were popping up all over social media with folks offering up moving, deeply personal testimonials about the importance of having a relatable black superhero on the big screen at last.

Sleep is one of the essential mysteries of existence. Each evening our bodies are compelled to shut down; our mental capacity slows, our muscles paralyze, and we wander unfettered through the shadowy dreamscapes of our subconscious. It’s estimated that fully a third of our fleeting life is spent under Morpheus’s spell; quite simply, we don’t want sleep, we need it, as surely as food and water. A good night’s rest restores the immune, nervous, skeletal and muscular systems, just as it enhances our mood, memory, sexual function and cognitive ability. Yet there exist a host of disorders--insomnia, hypersomnia, narcolepsy and sleep apnea; somnambulism, bruxism and circadian rhythm maladies--that can destroy sleep with dire consequences.

Directed by Zach Cregger (in his solo directorial debut), Barbarian (2022) was released this September to rave critical reviews and became the sleeper hit of the after-summer movie, slump grossing over $42 million worldwide against a $4.5 million budget.

Recently released to HBO MAX for streaming, I finally got the chance to see what the hype was all about. Immediately, I was sucked into the opening plot: a young woman (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb only to discover that the home was already rented out by another, a stranger named Keith (Bill Skarsgård). Having nowhere else to go, she stays at the rental property with him and strange things start to happen.

It’s now more than three years since Marvel released Avengers: Endgame, and in doing so, the MCU showed just how much potential they had at their fingertips as the climatic end to the Avengers series went on to become the second-highest grossing movie of all time.

Just over two months later, they brought an end to phase three of the Marvel series with Spider-Man: Far from Home, and there will have been many wondering what would happen next with the film series, given that key characters, and the actors that brought them so expertly to life, were saying farewell.

Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans waved goodbye to their exploits as Iron Man and Captain America, and producer Kevin Feige set in motion a plethora of new projects for both the big and small screen.

It's been said that, creatively speaking, there are no new ideas. To a certain extent the hypothesis is valid: every artistically inclined soul, whether they be a painter, sculptor, musician, writer or filmmaker, is only the sum of one's individual tastes in their given medium. Just as Plato was influenced by his mentor Socrates, so did Plato's philosophical musings mold his own student Aristotle; blues guitarist Muddy Waters impacted early rock gods Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones, who in turn impressed future generations of musicians; even weird-lit icon H.P. Lovecraft, whose inspiration affected untold imaginative minds, was self-admittedly a product of boyhood admiration for Edgar Allan Poe and Lord Dunsany. In this theory of artistic evolution what appears to be innovation (the abstract art of Marcel Duchamp or Picasso, for instance), is merely an opposing reaction against previous established trends rather than any stylistic revolution.

The splatter subgenre's ascendancy in the early '80's represented a monumental shift in movie horror. Where once fear films relied on suggestion, atmosphere and carefully crafted Hitchcockian dread to propel their plots, newer motion pictures such as Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13th, Cannibal Holocaust, Maniac, The Burning, The Evil Dead, Gates of Hell and A Nightmare on Elm Street eschewed innuendo in favor of explicitly visceral depictions of graphic sex and even more graphic violence. Rooted in Grand Guignol's lurid theatrical lynchings, the '60's low-budget camp-fests of gimmick kings Roger Corman, H.G. Lewis and William Castle and the exploitative shock tactics of underground '70's grindhouse cinema, this tsunami of celluloid usurpers worried parents, teachers and moral pundits the world over just as they enthralled a younger generation eager for the new movement's ostentatious freedoms.

Ahhhh, Halloween. Trick or treating and jack-o'-lanterns. Bloody spatter flicks at the local bijou and black cats crossing your path. That modern day inheritor of the Gaelic festival Samhain has evolved through the long centuries to rank second only to Christmas as the largest and most widely celebrated holiday in the United States, and for no small reason: according to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent a record $10.14 Billion in 2021 (an average per person of $102.74), on an ever-escalating array of spooky supplies--costumes, candy, cards, decorations, props, make-up, party favors, accessories--that have transformed the autumnal season into an economic juggernaut. It's a time that allows even the meekest among us get in touch with their inner ghoul, but what happens the following morning, when Dracula has retired to his coffin, all the apples have been bobbed and the sugar rush runs dry? What if your monster mash goes just a little too far?