I walked into the theater clinging to the memory of what a Christopher Nolan picture used to be. The murmurs surrounding The Odyssey were fractured, but I bought my ticket banking on the director's track record for boundary-pushing spectacle. I expected the intricate craftsmanship that defined his prime. Instead, as the credits rolled, I was staring at a screen that had just projected two hours of a director surrendering his signature vision to the Hollywood assembly line, trading his artistry for a painfully generic studio mandate. Image by The Cornell Daily Sun A Mediterranean Coat of Paint A Greek mythology epic needs to breathe the dust of the Aegean, but this simply doesn’t. When you watch Clash of the Guardians , Troy , or even Hercules (to a lesser extent, I suppose), they ground you in the bronze and dirt of antiquity; you feel like they belong in the era. The Odyssey , however, completely lacks that localized heartbeat. It operates like a standard, modern action flick th...
Whenever a new web-slinger adventure swings into theaters, my ticket is already bought. He has always been my favorite comic superhero, so I walked into the cinema closely watching how a cinematic universe would function in a reality where absolutely no one remembers Peter Parker. The slate was wiped entirely clean, leaving a massive question mark over the narrative. Fortunately, this fresh start absolutely sticks the landing, delivering an experience that fires on all cylinders and proves the new status quo works. Image by MarvelCinematicUniverse.Fandom.com Peak Web-Head Representation Let's get one thing straight: this is not my favorite Spider-man movie. That crown remains firmly on the head of Tobey Maguire's Spider-man 2. However, I will happily argue that Brand New Day gives us the single best on-screen representation of the character himself. The balancing act is finally perfect: the witty humor is razor-sharp, the action sequences are impossibly fast and agile, and the ...