Picoreview: Cinderella: Surprisingly good. Surprisingly dark! And that dress, wow. Cate Blanchett is, of course, splendid as the Wicked Stepmother, who was–in Ever After they managed to make the stepmother a more interesting than simply evil character, and Disney stepped up the game again with her. In everything save her treatment of Cinderella, I frankly admired her. She wasn’t good, but she was willing to use what she had to get what she needed, and…yeah. Pretty terrific characterisation for what could easily be a cut-out villain. Lily James was lovely…
Category: Movies
Picoreview: Step Up 2: The Streets
Picoreview: Step Up 2: The Streets: As good as your average dance movie, which means less good than Step Up, but possibly good enough to explain why there ended up being FIVE Step Up movies. It turns out this is the first one I’d seen in the theatres, and I don’t think the dancing is quite as good in it as in the first film. A lot of it seems less…controlled, although that may be deliberate, because that’s kind of the thing the main character lacks, so it may be…
What I wanted from Jupiter Ascending
As I said on Twitter, I was going to write a blog post about what I wanted/expected from Jupiter Ascending, and then I thought “shit, maybe I should write a book!” But a blog post is a lot faster. :) This will make more sense if you’ve seen JA, obviously, and will be rife with spoilers if you haven’t.
Picoreview: Step Up
Picoreview: Step Up: Better than your average Wrong Side Of The Tracks Dance Movie. I have an unashamed love for Wrong Side Of The Tracks dance movies while being perfectly capable of recognising that their usual range of quality falls somewhere between “not good” and “excrutiating”. Most feature at least one lead who cannot. act. at. all. Some feature two. In the real humdingers, not only can neither of the leads act but neither can any of the supporting cast, either. However, they can all dance, which is really all…
Picoreview: Jupiter Rising
Picoreview: Jupiter Rising: I’m putting my money down now: Channing Tatum is not going to be the problem with the Gambit movie. This is not to say there will not be innumerable problems with it, because it would take a miracle of untold proportions for it to be any good, but what Jupiter Ascending did was convince me that Tatum could actually do a damn fine job playing the Ragin’ Cajun. My current expectation is that it’s going to be the equivalent of Catwoman, in which I maintain poor Halle…