Arriving to overblown fanfare and unreasonable expectations, Ava DuVernay‘s A Wrinkle In Time was never going to live up to the hype.
It was bad enough that box office watchers openly wondered how A Wrinkle In Time would compete with Black Panther, a money-printing machine of historic, multi-hyphenate proportions.
We don’t usually recommend streaming titles you have to rent as standalones, but when Don Hertzfeldt suddenly drops a sequel to World of Tomorrow, I’ll make an exception.
Judging by the reactions of friends, Hertzfeldt seems to fall pretty squarely in the love-it-or-hate-it column.
Some films simply arrive at the exact right moment. Whether through canny decisions on distribution and release, real-world events outside the producers’ control, or some other happenstance collision of histories, a cultural product arrives that is both inevitable and sorely needed.
After the recent acclaim of Boyhood and the lovely triumph that is the Before Trilogy, it’s hard to imagine a modern American cinema without Richard Linklater. But when Dazed and Confused appeared on the screen in 1993, it came as a surprise, a fresh voice and a gentle, throwback approach to the “hangout movie” that resonated with fans of stoner comedies and wistful nostalgia alike.
So, now that the awards season is blissfully over, let’s talk about some other movies. Specifically, 370 of them.
After watching Steve James’ remarkable documentary Life Itself (excuse me while I go weep), I got to thinking about Roger Ebert.