DEREK EX MACHINA, created by author and editor Derek L.H., is a blog dedicated to exploring the effect that video games and film have on people.
All tagged Movie Review
Through intelligent framing and using the audiences familiarity with the film’s genre against them, Strange Darling subverts and weaponizes audience expectations, making them just as much of a victim as the many characters who get bested in the film.
Through its dark humor and brilliantly realized characters, The Art of Self-Defense manages to say a lot about violence and masculinity without every coming across as full of itself or preachy. Self-Defense is a film that very much understands what it is and the kind of story it’s trying to tell, and doesn’t attempt to be anything that it isn’t. What results is a film that is tightly focused, funny, and intelligent.
What makes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse so special to me is that a begets its audience to rethink what animation is capable of. This film could have easily adopted a live-action counterpart, or used a more traditional CG art style - but it didn’t. Why was this? Why, in this instance, did Sony choose to take a riskier and more stylistic approach when a safer, more often-used presentation would have been easier (and likely more profitable)? The answer to that…is passion.
Widows - while certainly having some excellently realized commentary on modern western culture and the increasing spread of apathy - doesn’t manage to do much you haven’t seen before in a heist film […] It’s certainly flawed, but it’s clear that this film was a product of smart and lovingly-crafted writing and direction, which alone makes it worth a watch.
