Picoreview: Fast & Furious 7: broke my heart. I knew it was going to; the goddamn trailers were making me tear up even as I recognized that they were specifically choreographed to. I had no attachment at all to Paul Walker–I think the only thing I’ve seen him in is the F&F movies–but I was shocked by his death because, well. It was shocking. And so messed up, that he’s best known for these fast car movies and then died in a horrific car wreck. So FF7 was always going…
Picoreview: Seventh Son: I can’t tell if that was subjectively bad or objectively bad. The problem is that I’ve read the source books, but not for quite a while, and they’re a terrible adaptation of the source books but because my memory of them isn’t clear I spent a great deal of the movie going, “Wait, is that…did that…was that…okay, that’s DEFINITELY not from the books…,” which left me uncertain at the end if I’d seen your bog-standard bad fantasy film, in which case, for a bog-standard bad fantasy film…
Picoreview: Insurgent: A lot better than Divergent. This is damning with faint praise, as I thought Divergent was pretty awful, or possibly even worse than “pretty awful” in that you could see where it could possibly be good but MOSTLY what you saw was how it Wasn’t Hunger Games. Insurgent didn’t have as much of that This Is What It’s Failing To Be feeling to it, so that helped a lot. It’s–pretty predictable, although there were a couple of nice twists, particularly with an unexpected action at the end that…
TV on DVD: Sleepy Hollow Season One: That went more or less where I expected it to, but I enjoyed the ride. There was…it’s not a long season, but I kind of felt it could have been a little shorter without losing anything, as some of it managed to feel samey-samey despite being a new show and all of that. It’s probably hard to feel entirely fresh and new in a supernatural TV show at this point, but even so. Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison have wonderful chemistry. I couldn’t…
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…