INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY. Time may eventually allow us to more properly contextualize the great Dr. Jones. Younger generations may have already done it, distanced as they presumably are from the visceral, world-making experience of meeting Harrison Ford’s irascible, iron-tough, impossibly cool archeologist at an age when that introduction was as formative, […]
Mill Creek Cinema
Posted inArts + Scene
No Hard Feelings‘ Rom-com Chops
NO HARD FEELINGS. Within the ever-deepening river of pan-cultural division, there are convoluted, often contradictory undercurrents too numerous to parse. In this new age of (dis)information, some of these knotty notions see more frequent, if less substantive, discussion than they might have in decades past. But for all the pointing and yelling, precious few reach […]
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New Tricks, Old Tropes
EXTRACTION 2. It could be said 2020 came on a little strong. Many of us met the uncertainty, paranoia and concern with a voracious consumption of media, both new and familiar. Of course, novel entertainments were in rather short supply in those early, apocalyptic months. This turned out to be quite the boon to Netflix […]
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Flamin’ Hot‘s Stale Corporate Propaganda
FLAMIN’ HOT touts itself as a heartwarming tale of grit and pride, and a corrective to the injustices Latinos face in the U.S. (and Hollywood in particular), but it’s a discouraging paean to a mythical American dream. The strength of its cast, its cultural celebrations, and its hollow promise of an examination of race in […]
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You Hurt My Feelings ‘ White Lies
YOU HURT MY FEELINGS. Sometime in the future, a forensic anthropologist trying to understand human society in the year 2023 will wonder how it felt to identify as “bougie” in a world on the brink of collapse. How did people dance on the edge of that abyss? Did they really sublimate the pervasive sense of […]
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Heroine Withdrawal
HIGH DESERT. Maybe we don’t need another detective series. Maybe every red herring has been fileted by now and it’s time to call it a day. I have watched a lot of TV. It has all been done. Around the time a psychic detective solved a murder by seeing through the eyes of a haunted […]
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Live,Love & Death, Laugh
LOVE & DEATH. Like fish in a river, each of us have a lure that, no matter how clever we are or how much we want to resist its color and flash, will snag us every time. If you popped open my custom tacklebox, there among the action heroines, hauntings and heists (and makeover montages […]
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Not that Kind of Mother
THE MOTHER. Now that the Mother’s Day brunch dishes have been cleared, the bath bombs dissolved and hug coupons redeemed, let’s talk action movie motherhood. Wives and children are a civilizing force on action movie men, who put aside the weapons of war for family. Well, at least until someone kidnaps or murders said objects […]
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Margaret and Goliath
It should be abundantly clear I don’t participate much in the cultural conversation, at least not in any meaningful, modern way. The Editor has gone so far as to say I’m too much a recluse to qualify as an internet troll. Yet, rumblings and fragments of messages still filter through the roof of my bunker […]
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Beau is Afraid and a Little Funny
BEAU IS AFRAID. I’ve long harbored pet theory (borne of petty resentment) about only sons of single mothers. Having observed them at varying distances for the better part of a life, albeit with inescapable preconceptions, I would say this theory is something more than anecdotal; it is still very much the product of an addled […]
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The B List
Because this is an era defined in part by unearned nostalgia, we still frequently refer to a certain type of cinema as “B movies” or, if our geekiness tends to anachronism, “programmers.” This calls back to a time when the movie industry was more siloed but also more disparate, when studios diverted resources and talent […]
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Fresh Blood
THE POPE’S EXORCIST. Most — nearly all — exorcism movies come off as nasty, pale hokum, and for good reason. The Exorcist (1973) towers over all of them, the alpha and the omega, a procedural examination that presents itself without cynicism and without any seeming agenda. It does the essential work of believing its own […]