I get you. Sometimes it works really well, and you can appreciate the magic even if you can clearly see the soundstage trappings.

He talks about Aladdin not aging well by using two terms that went out of fashion six weeks ago.

If you a kill a man in the dead of winter, steam will arise from the wounds. Indians believed this was the soul escaping from his body. 

It’s the ultimate self-pitying Boomer pic. In the Hollywood of that era, nothing was as moving to those in power as the sight of a 40-year-old wealthy white man rediscovering his inner child. Barf.

Videos like these honestly leave me worried for the state of fiction and storytelling. It’s like we’re setting ourselves up to never suspend our disbelief ever again.

Glen : I’d never done a crazy thing in my life before that night. Why is it that if a man kills another man in battle, it’s called heroic, yet if he kills a man in the heat of passion, it’s called murder? …

“A Whole New World” isn’t what I’d describe as a banger (if I were to use that term). “Banger” to me indicates “head banger,” and while there’s not any heavy metal in Aladdin, “Never Had a Friend Like Me” and “Prince Ali” are far closer to being “bangers” than the Oscar-bait song.

That Deadpool/Genie comparison is spot on. One thing that surprises me about Deadpool is how is feels like something that should have been released in the 90s. With its cheap, “knowing” postmodernism, it strikes me as more of a movie from twenty-five years ago than from the 2010s. The popularity of Deadpool continues…

Between songs that slap, songs that are bangers, and crapping on Robin Williams, this is a very contemporary review.

Those three, Insomnia, One Hour Photo, and Death to Smoochy are my little “Robin Williams is the bad guy” trilogy. 

He also was pretty menacing in One Hour Photo (2002).

I wouldn’t say garbage, but it’s nowhere near as fun (or funny) as it should be for a film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring peak Robin Williams.

On my first foot, let me just say that growing up with a father given to reciting Robin Williams’ golf routine in its entirely whenever he could has left me knowing exactly what to tell people who don’t know what to tell me about being soured enough on his standup not to give it another try.

Genies are basically Janets. All knowing and can get you anything you like.

No, I'm pretty sure he hung around an old movie ranch with a bunch of other hippies and then ran afoul of an inordinately handsome stuntman one afternoon.

“Bertram got real into the 60s and no one ever heard from him again.”

The movie’s novelization gives it more nuance. It’s actually a bit depressing — we find out that because it was his first erotic experience, he forever associated drowning with desire and was unable to get, let alone maintain, an erection without the complex and dangerous ritual of drowning/resuscitation beforehand.

It tried to find its own voice by setting it not in London (as in the book) nor Chicago (as in the movie) but Brooklyn, a setting new and fresh and so little used in film and TV and not at all a tired cliche!

I rewatched all of Spielberg’s films during lockdown and Hook held up better than I thought it would. Loved it as a kid but it’s incredibly self indulgent and definitely too long (and Rufio is no longer as cool as he was when I was 9. But it’s fun, earnest and whenever Hoffman and Hoskins are on screen it works like…

Yes.