Bodied: TIFF Review

I find myself a bit taken a back by the fact that I actually really enjoyed a Joseph Khan movie for once. Bodied is still problematic as hell and goes on for WAY too long but it has a sense of personality, purpose, and energy. It's mostly entertaining and gives a really intriguing insight into a really unique and emotional subculture. It's a much better cultural and social satire than Detention but it still isn't quite as groundbreaking as it seems to think it is.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jurassic World: Rebirth Review

Image
  The best one of these things has hit since Spielberg was behind the camera. Edwards understands the best route for any follow-up isn't cynical self-serious trash but some finely mounted thinly-written wet and wild schlock about corporate greed - this time in big pharma edition! The bits with the family become extremely grating pretty quickly but the set-pieces in this are so deranged and the core trio of movie stars are incredibly fun to watch. The thing that surprised me most about this though is the way Edwards actually attempts to restore the allure of this series and, in some moments, he gets really close. His eye for scale and scope go a really long way and the humanist "Science is for all of us" approach imbues it with an accessible sense of wonder. For a few moments, sitting in 4DX with my dino incubator popcorn bucket, I could actually see the spark of the original. B-
Read more

War for the Planet of the Apes: Review

Image
The original run of  Planet of the Apes  films from the 1960’s and 70’s were some of the most influential films of my childhood and even when I watch them today, the campy and pertinent charm still manages to shine through to this day. However, with this new rebooted series, I’ve found it harder to connect to Caesar's narrative, whether it be because of the particularly uninspired direction of  Rise  or the overall sense of familiarity and lack of subtlety in its sequel,  Dawn . But now the final installment,  War  is here and much to my delight, it is the best of this updated trilogy. Arriving in a summer that is filled with franchise/cinematic universe obsessed films, it feels quite refreshing that  War  is one that is beaming with a great and somber sense of humanity, empathy, and purpose. While we are clearly supposed to side with Caesar and his army of loyal apes, this film does a good job at making a case for the side of the h...
Read more

28 Years Later Review

Image
Incredible to see Boyle and Garland almost 30 years into their collaborations working with more money than they've ever had and coming out with their boldest swing for the fences yet and it's potentially the best both of them have ever been. They reframe the visual language of this franchise into something bigger, lusher and clearer than ever before. It's both a horror film picking at the remains of life amid cultural rot AND, most unexpectedly, a tender folktale about a boy (an astonishing debut performance from Alfie Williams) who wants to save his mom and the humane lessons of death and life that he will learn. It builds to a sequences that is conceptually grotesque yet undeniably and starkly ethereal and moving. Reader, I cried pretty hard at this thing. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my biggest fear was losing one of my parents. I would have nightmares about it constantly and would think "when I'm an adult, I'm going to do whatever I can to protect ...
Read more