Film – Page 2 – Timothy Johnson

February 13, 2017February 14, 2017

The Walking Dead Season 7 Mid-Season Premiere

The Walking Dead’s mid-season premiere just aired, and I’m seeing a lot of criticism of the show’s first half of season seven. I endured this criticism through November, but now I feel like it’s getting a bit tired. While I acknowledge the purpose of television is to entertain, I think these critics miss the point of what The Walking Dead is doing and, therefore, can’t appreciate it.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, of course. I think the show is still great, and if you’re interested in why I think that, please read on.

(This is fairly spoiler free, but if you’ve been under a rock and don’t have any idea what happens at the end of season six/beginning of season seven, you might want to turn away.)

Isn’t that redundant? Can one rise down? Whatever. Looks awesome. Carry on.

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November 19, 2016June 11, 2019

Film Review: Arrival

I don’t review movies here all that much, and the honest reason is it isn’t often that I see a relevant movie when it’s relevant. Movie theaters are too expensive, and by the time a movie gets to Netflix, it’s old news and has to contend with my desire to catch up on Supernatural.

But so many people close to me told me to go see Arrival that it got me out of my apartment on a Friday night with my wife for a romantic evening of food court dining and aliens. And it turned out to be special.

Arrival is a film that works on a simple premise: aliens arrive and park their space ships over 12 seemingly random locations on Earth, and then they just sit there. The tagline poses the question, “why are they here?”

Beyond that, Arrival is a film that works on extremely complex premises. It’s clear that this film was lovingly crafted and resided in the minds of brilliant story-tellers for such a time for them to get it all right. It is thoughtful and thought provoking. It feels authentic. It is, by many metrics, a perfect film, nailing the basics and knocking the most high-level concepts out of the park.

April 12, 2016June 11, 2019

Love the X-Men, the X-Men Movies Not So Much (and Not Because They Aren’t Faithful)

In 2006, I left a Virginia Regal Cinemas mad as hell. The first X-Men movie wasn’t perfect, but it was a slam dunk for superhero films and a great beginning for the franchise. X-Men 2 was very good until the ending. X-Men 3 was a crushing defeat for fans and a prime example of how overbearing movie producers can ruin a film.

It has to be this. It has to do that. Demands like these lead to a story that is contrived. But what’s interesting to me is that X-Men 3 didn’t just feel contrived. It had such rippling effects to the series that it’s ruined every film since.

This is the measure of Brett Ratner’s failure in X-Men 3. If you’re not aware, the first two X-Men films were directed by Bryan Singer. But when Singer was unavailable to direct X-Men 3 because he was working on Superman Returns (which is underappreciated, in my opinion), the movie producers opted not to wait for him, and that decision ruined the franchise.

Last week, I finally got around to watching X-Men: Days of Future past. The premise is that the events of the original trilogy led to an apocalyptic future where genocidal robots, called Sentinels, fought a war with mutant-kind, and the rest of humanity was collateral damage. As a result, there are very few people left in this apocalyptic wasteland, and it’s all because we couldn’t learn to overcome our primal fear of people who are different.

April 7, 2016August 15, 2016

On The Walking Dead Season 6 Finale

I love The Walking Dead. The TV series is perhaps my favorite of all time. Everything about it resonates with me. I love it so much, in fact, that I go to places just to hear people talk about it.

Among super fans, I am not a super fan, because that kind of love takes a special kind of attention that I just can’t devote to anything that isn’t my wife, my work, or my dog. But in the scheme of things I’m a fan of, The Walking Dead is near the top.

This past Sunday, April 3, AMC aired The Walking Dead’s season six finale. I was more amped for it than any TV event in my life. For the first 89 minutes of the 90-minute (minus lots of advertising) episode, it was a 10 out of 10, one of the best episodes the series had ever created. But something happens in the final seconds that completely undermines everything the show had done in the second half of season six, and it’s a terrible shame.

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September 21, 2015June 11, 2019

Don’t Worry; Fear the Walking Dead is Still Getting Better

After last night’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead, I’ve read a fair bit about how it wasn’t as good as last week’s episode, about how it took a wrong turn, about how it’s boring.

I couldn’t disagree more. Last night’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead was a turning point for the show, and one that it desperately needed.

Heads up. Major season one, episode four spoilers below. I’m going into depth. If you haven’t seen it, go away. Go away, and watch it. This is your final warning. You sure you want to continue? You sure? Confirm your decision to continue: [yes] no

All right, then.

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