Martin Scorsese supposedly coined the expression: “one for them, one for you”, meaning you do the movies the studio wants you to do in order to do the movies you want to do. The Dark Knight Rises is, famously, one of the most open and avowed “one for them” movies in recent Hollywood history.
Nolan didn’t want to do it (especially after Heath Ledger’s tragic death) and never bothered to hide the fact that this was the hoop he had to jump through to get Warners to pony up for Inception.
But you know what? It’s a myth that great art only comes from passion projects. Plenty of good and even great films have come from people who just showed up to work that day. And look, if the price we had to pay for every Inception was a Dark Knight Rises, I’d take that deal.
But there are problems with this movie. And (bizarrely, given this is the exact same writing team that gave us the fucking GOAT of a script that was The Dark Knight) pretty much all those problems begin and end on the page.
In the past I’ve had plenty of opportunities to extol my favourite film critic, Tim Brayton over at Alternate Ending and now is as good a time as any to re-up. Check him out if you haven’t already. He’s a fantastic critic and an inspiration and so it is with a certain bitter-sweet melancholy that I must report that I have at last surpassed him.
Not in terms of quality of analysis or wit of writing, fuck no, I’m not insane. But you see, Tim actually reviews movies roughly when they come out, like some kind of freak with a work ethic, where as I review movies when I feel like it, maaan.
But today represents the first time I’m aware of where I actually beat him to the punch. My The Marvels review has come out before his The Marvels review, a victory whose sweetness is only slightly mitigated by the fact that I’m not entirely sure he intends to actually review this movie, a fact that is both completely understandable and quite damning.
A major critic not reviewing the latest installment of the MCU? How can this be?
It’s like that moment during the trial of Charles the First where the top fell off his cane and no one bent down to pick it up for him. In that moment, he knew he was king no more and also possibly that he was about to get a pretty aggressive haircut.
And look, I wanted to like this one. I want to like every movie I sit down to review. I love a good comeback story as much as anyone. And I had actually heard positive rumblings that this movie was far better than its paltry box-office and mediocre critical reception would suggest. I was even told it was something of an overlooked gem. Who told me that? In retrospect, fools. The movie is (mostly) trash.
Hello friends! Did you read Knock Knock Open Wide? Well thanks!/nuts to you! (delete as appropriate). But if you DID, and you happened to come across any typos or errors could you let me know so that the paperback can be even better? Thanks!
Two days out to the post going up and that’s where I’m at.
This movie made me feel clean because it just washed right over me.
I saw Zone of Interest recently. That shit shook me to my core. I could write about that? Something something banality of evil something something evil of banality?
Honestly it still feels like I’ve just quit my job and started as a professional writer but no. I’ve been doing this for a few years apparently. And it’s already time to announce my third novel.
What even is time? Anyway; BEHOLD!
This one is going to be much closer to Knock Knock than When the Sparrow Falls (I mean, duh, right?) and I’m so excited for you all to finally read it.
Look, we all like to make fun of Disney and their utterly shameless milking of their beloved animated classics with cheap and tawdry cash ins. But give them this; even during the height of the direct-to-video boom after Return of Jafar had proved that cheap sequels to big-name animated features were basically a licence to print money, they never went to the same well more than twice. Okay, twice and a tv series. That was it. Three movies and a TV series, MAX. No more. They had standards. Allegedly.
I love how it says “An All New Movie”. Isn’t every movie an all new movie?
Of course, Disney had a very large stable of properties to exploit. But what if you had a studio that
a) Really wanted to get in on that cheap direct-to-video cartoon action.
b) Had a very, very small pool of household name animation to sequelise and
c) Had absolutely zero shame?
Well…you’d get the cinematic donkey-show that was Universal’s Land Before Time franchise. Now, Land Before Time was a pretty damn good film and it did, y’know…decent at the box office. It opened at No 1. But it also lost to Oliver and Companyin terms of overall ticket sales. So…fine, but nothing to crow about either.
Certainly, it did not do the kind of numbers that would justify 13 GODDAMN SEQUELS. THIRTEEN.
ONE. THREE.
AND A MOTHERFUCKING TV SHOW.
Now, I am not going to review every single one of them, that’s why God made Jenny Nicholson. I’m just here to review The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends, the second last entry in the series and, by all accounts, the worst of the bunch (because my readers think I’m a bad person and wish me harm).
However!
We can’t just dive in after an eleven movie gap without being hopelessly lost so I have set my team of extremely well-paid maps to work on a breakdown of everything that happens in this series between the first and thirteenth installements.
The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure
The gang must fight to protect their new home when Sharpteeth find a way into the Great Valley.
The Land Before Time III: The Time of Great Giving
When a sudden shortage of water threatens all life in the Great Valley, the gang of young dinosaurs must cooperate with a group of bullies to make a risky journey outside the valley and find the cause.
The Land Before Time IV: The Quest for Peace
The gang decide to rid the valley of nuclear weapons.
The Land Before Time V: The Final Frontier
Littlefoot’s previously unknown half-brother appears in the Great Valley, and he’s on a mission from God.
The Land Before Time VI:
In an attempt to save their failing marriage, Littlefoot and Cera open a bistro in Milan.
The Land Before Time VII: Long Hard Neck
The series’ one brave, but ultimately misjudged, entry into the genre of hardcore pornography.
The Land Before Time VIII: Littlefoot versus Godzilla
The no-brainer crossover that couldn’t fail. Actually failed quite a bit.
The Land Before Time IX: Please No More
Clip show.
The Land Before Time X: Tokyo Drift
In order to avoid a prison sentence, Littlefoot becomes a drag racer.
The Land Before Time XI: Ultimate Betrayal
The gang are shocked to learn that Spike was working for Internal Affairs the whole time.
The Land Before Time XII: Time Arrives
The gang have to adjust to living in a land that has time now where they can actually age and die. Directed by Werner Herzog. Harrowingly bleak.
You know the thing about the dinosaurs? It’s really, really sad when you think about it.
These beautiful animals lived for millions of years and then one day, literally one day, their world turned into a flaming hell and they died horribly. And they never understood why.
I was thinking about that a lot as I sat down to re-watch Don Bluth’s third film, The Land Before Time, and the last one he made before parting company with Stephen Spielberg. On one level, this is the least personal of Bluth’s early, pre-sellout films and the one that he had the least real affection for. Whereas Secret of Nimhand An American Tailwere true collaborations, The Land Before Time seems to have been the point where Spielberg (and new producer George Lucas) really took the reigns and Bluth was more just the guy who animated what the execs wanted. Story-wise at least. Whatever you think about him as a film-maker, Bluth had a tendency to stamp his work very strongly and it does still very much feel like one of his films in terms of atmosphere, if not necessarily subject matter.
This feels like it came from Spielberg. Is that just me?
Bluth’s films are famously dark and melancholy and I think that’s why this one works.
More than any other movie, this one captures the essential truth that any story about dinosaurs is a tragedy.
Do you want to know how I got these scars into writing about movies?
My college had its own version of “The Onion” where I made my bones writing utterly run-of-the-mill edgy early 2000’s college humour (i.e. the kind of stuff that would get me cancelled today so fast it would break the laws of physics) and my editor asked me if I’d be interested in trying my hand at writing a movie review. And the very first movie I ever reviewed for them (if memory serves) was none other than The Dark Knight. And now you know my gritty origin story. And, if you are old enough to remember my earliest reviews (DON’T GO BACK AND READ THEM DON’T YOU DO IT I SWEAR TO GOD) you’ll remember that this movie was a BIG deal to me and those early reviews are chock full of references to it, even when they weren’t relevant or funny. Which was all the time. I see that now.
So, as you can imagine, I approached this one with a great deal of trepidation. Is it really as good as I remember?
The MCU fell from grace the way Hemingway’s Mike Campbell went bankrupt, slowly and then all at once.
I think we all felt it, didn’t we? At some point this year, probably in the summer when Barbenheimer was in full swing, there was a moment when all of us who had still not disembarked from the hype train took a look at the MCU and said “nah, I’m done”.
And you probably have your own explanation for why that is. Endgame was the peak and it’s all been downhill since then. Superhero fatigue. Bad writing. Too woke. Not woke enough. Too much CGI. Martin Scorsese dropping truth bombs. The pandemic. Whatever.
But ultimately, I think the real reason was just…time. The studio execs currently running around trying to figure out why audiences aren’t flocking to their superhero movies anymore are like surfers wondering why the tidal wave they were riding faded away into the ocean.
Guys. It was a wave. That’s what they do.
Granted, it was a wave like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Depending on when you consider the modern age of superhero movies to have begun (the first X-Men movie maybe?) we’ve been riding this wave for over twenty years with some of the biggest box-office numbers of all time. But, it really was just a bigger version of every other Hollywood trend, be that “make everything like the Matrix” or “make everything like Transformers” or (if you want to go old school) “make everything a Western”. And trends never last. That’s why they’re called “trends”.
And I’ve been burned enough times before to know not to make any big predictions. Maybe these last two years were just a brief blip in an unbroken streak of cinematic dominance that will stretch on to the death of the universe. But, right now, in the waning hours of 2023 it sure feels like the MCU is done. And I’m okay with that. And I don’t regret my time with it as long as I can pretend Thor 4doesn’t exist.
Because, even if we got nothing else of value from this series of films, James Gunn got to make the Guardians trilogy, and I wouldn’t deny him that for the world.
I swear to God, I wrote the end of year wrap up for 2022 last week, time is going too fast make it stop make it stop…
Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyway, how are you all? How’s every little thing? Merry Christmas.
2023 was…a year. Ups and downs. Highs and lows. Swings and roundabouts.
October saw the release of my second book, Knock Knock, Open Wide to polite, restrained acclaim. I must take the opportunity now to thank Alex Grecian and Brian Evenson for kindly providing blurbs, and oh my God, BIG thanks to Clay McLeod Chapman who was an absolute LEGEND promoting the book online. You should check out his novel What Kind of Mother, it’s a heartbreaking story of loss set in the backwoods of Virginia with terrifying yet symbolic crabs. Mouse recommends.
And, of course, if you were kind enough to support me by picking up a copy, you have my eternal thanks.
Anyway, this year’s reviews:
In 2023 I reviewed 1 Canon Disney movie, 3 MCU movies with another to follow before year end, 1 animé, 2 live action movies (I’m counting Dark Crystal as live action and not animation because it is), 4 non-Disney canon animated features, 1 TV series, 1 Bats versus Bolts (it lives again!), 6 Batman movies plus the Gotham Knight series of short films and one weird essay that was supposed to be a review of Inherit the Wind but turned into me having an existential breakdown over the impossibility of knowing objective truth.
This was definitely a year when I pulled back from my usual staples of the MCU and Disney Canon but…Jesus, can you blame me? Not a hot take, I know, but whenever I have a bad year I will remind myself that at least it wasn’t as bad as Disney’s 2023. Holy shit what a dumpster fire. And we’re not done yet.
You were supposed to be the Chosen One!
So, as a Disney reviewer and fan am I disheartened or saddened by this sudden, catastrophic reversal of the company’s fortunes? No, not at all. It’s a massive, rapacious corporation that doesn’t care in the slightest about any of us and thinking it’s your friend will get you eaten alive like that dude in Grizzly Man. If you do find yourself feeling sympathy, watch the Oh My Disney! sequence from Wreck It Ralph 2 to remind yourself of the rather sickening hubris that brought them to this point. Or, indeed, just watch any of their recent output. But the other reason why I’m not worried is because we have been here before. The canon always goes through highs and lows. They’ll course correct and come back stronger than ever. Happened after the second world war. Happened after the death of Walt, happened after the end of the Renaissance. Sunrise, sunset.
Anyway, my never-ending quest to clear my review backlog has reached some of the weirder and grungier items on the menu and this, combined with the aforementioned pant-shitting of two of my regular series, meant I honestly did not review that many good films this year. Best film?
Well spoilers, but yeah, it’s going to be Guardians 3.
Worst film?
Holy moly, spoiled for choice. This year had no less than FOUR new entries into the Hall of Shame which I think may be a record? And while a fair man might say that Freddie as FR07was the worst film I’ve seen this year, I am neither fair, nor a man. I fucking hate Thor: Love and Thunder and I want to get one more kick in the goolies before New Year.
And on that happy note, thanks so much for reading and commenting. You guys are, as always, the best.
unshavedmouse 