Media Man

This week, Disney released the first trailer to their upcoming film Christopher Robin , which I discovered, to my disappointment, was not  a Finding Neverland  style story of how the Winnie the Pooh  books came to be, but rather a live-action sort-of sequel to the Winnie the Pooh  mythos (I can't believe I just wrote the words " Winnie the Pooh  mythos"). Normally, I would be all over another Winnie the Pooh  movie; I've always had a soft spot in my hard, cynical heart for that stuffed bear and his other animal friends. They're all well-defined characters with big personalities, charming designs and go on wholesome adventures. However, I have a sinking feeling about this new Pooh  movie and it's not just because Disney's live-action output since 2015 has been nothing but bland cash-grabbing. There are a few discomforting parts of this trailer that make me think that the Disney executive board (for that is who's actually making their movies nowadays, no...

I had hoped that Red Sparrow would engage a very interesting cultural shift, but was crushingly disappointed by such an uninteresting film. While Russians have never been in the good graces of American pop culture it’s been some time since I’ve seen a paranoid Russia-phobic spy thriller make its way into theaters. The fact that producers think this will actually succeed is reflective of our paranoia over Russian interference in American politics, perhaps signaling the start of a new Cold War or a continuation of one that never truly ended. And yet instead of feeling like an impactful film for the modern era along the same lines as Selma or The Florida Project it feels as though it’s a few decades behind the rest of the world. Dominika (Jennifer Lawrence) is a Russian ex-ballet dancer who is recruited into a secret training program to become an assassin. After her training, she’s tasked with gaining the trust of an American CIA agent (Joel Edgerton) while strug...