The Obsessive Viewer

Premise: A live-action prequel feature film following a young Cruella de Vil.

How refreshing is it to finally see a Disney live-action film with some real style to it? Far too often with their live-action remakes, the end result works as an adaptation, but fails to make a convincing argument for its own existence. Beauty and the Beast looked great but was essentially a beat-for-beat remake of the animated classic. The same goes for The Lion King and Mulan. This time around, Disney had the good sense to forego the same route with 101 Dalmatians and explore an origin story by focusing on that film’s memorable villain.

Premise: Following a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, a group of mercenaries take the ultimate gamble, venturing into the quarantine zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted.

A zombie Siberian tiger. An undead corpse’s microwaved hand. A needle-drop of The Cranberries’ “Zombie.” Sean Spicer. All of this – and so much more – are part of the lunacy and silliness that we have to look forward to with writer-director Zack Snyder’s newest film Army of the Dead. A master of opening credit sequences, Snyder includes a moment with a paratrooper dropping into a horde of zombies, where the parachute envelopes the screen, splattered with blood. The image is undoubtedly striking, but try to parse out the logic of the sequence, and your head will surely explode. Much like Snyder’s earlier 2021 release, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and the majority of his filmography, the film continues to establish the director’s legacy of creating memorable images that reveal themselves to be fairly hollow upon further scrutiny.

Premise: David desperately tries to keep his family of six together during a separation from his wife. They both agree to see other people but David struggles to grapple with his wife’s new relationship.

With a title like The Killing of Two Lovers, you’d be forgiven if you were to go into it expecting a more violent drama. But director, screenwriter, and editor Robert Machoian has more on his mind than surface-level passion. Namely the slow and painful disintegration of a marriage, and everyone that gets sucked into its wake. Machoian’s film uses many impressive tricks and techniques to sell the ideas he’s working towards, but the film could ultimately be polished more in its shadings of some of the secondary characters.

Premise: A stowaway on a mission to Mars sets off a series of unintended consequences.

When a company like Netflix resolves to release at least one film per week in a given year, it remains harder and harder for any single film to stand out amongst the pack. For every Mank or The Irishman or Mudbound, there’s a hundred more films that serve as glorified filler material, taking up the same amount of bandwidth on the platform and competing for the same space in our ever-dwindling attention spans. Stowaway manages to hold its own in spite of all of this, and becomes a well-intentioned, character-based space drama.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

Premise: Zack Snyder’s definitive director’s cut of Justice League. Determined to ensure Superman’s ultimate sacrifice was not in vain, Bruce Wayne aligns forces with Diana Prince with plans to recruit a team of metahumans to protect the world from an approaching threat of catastrophic proportions.

The internet can, on very rare occasions, be used as a force for good in the world. In 2017, Disney pulled the insufferable short film Olaf’s Frozen Adventure from Coco’s screenings after audiences voiced their overwhelmingly negative reactions. In 2019, Paramount re-tooled Sonic the Hedgehog after fans recoiled in horror at the reveal of the titular character’s look. And now, 4 years after its initial release, Warner Bros. has caved to its fans and released the long-fabled “Snyder cut” of Justice League.