Adam Selvidge's Website Blog
After an entity of mysterious origin annihilates the world’s population causing those who observe it to take their lives, Sebastián and his daughter begin their own great adventure of survival in Barcelona. A sequel to the movie that had no relation at all to the previous movie is a bold choice for Netflix and “Bird Box Barcelona” has a distinct feeling of a movie that was made only so Netflix could check off a language requirement or two to sooth local government’s nerves about the big American company coming in and steamrolling local culture. Is it a good film? It’s...
Five years after an ominous unseen presence drives most of society to suicide, a mother and her two children make a desperate bid to reach safety. Of course I had to watch the movie again after I read the book and having just read the original story I was primed to see the narrative and structural changes that were made to the story, all of which worked in service of the medium that they were in, with Tom changing from just a close friend to a lover and Malorie having a gun and using a blanket at times to be...
Barbie suffers a crisis that leads her to question her world and her existence. Have you seen the first LEGO movie from 2014 yet? Or how about it’s sequel in 2019? If you’ve seen either of those, this will be a slightly less subtle version of those stories about a toy leaving it’s realm to find itself but being betrayed by a loved one while a nefarious Will Ferrell lurks about doing nefarious things that end up not being all that nefarious but are still somewhat concerning. I don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to positively say this is a polemic...
IF YOU’VE SEEN WHAT’S OUT THERE… IT’S ALREADY TOO LATE Malorie raises the children the only way she can: indoors, with the doors locked, the curtains closed, and mattresses nailed over the windows. The children sleep in the bedroom across the hall, but soon she will have to wake them and blindfold them. Today they will risk everything. Today they will leave the house. Josh Malerman’s New York Times bestselling Bird Box is a terrifying psychological thriller that will haunt you long after reading. Bird Box is a quick read, it only took me a couple nights of reading before...
The story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. Not having seen him in any of the trailers, it took me a solid 5 minutes to realize how large of a part Robert Downey Jr was going to have in the story, and I think we’re all a little better that they didn’t lean on him in the marketing. “Oppenheimer” the film is a mostly true story of how the Manhattan project was conceived and run with a large part of the scientific and practical testing happening under J. Robert Oppenheimer’s...
Doctors and nurses at the intensive care unit of a New Orleans hospital struggle with treating patients during Hurricane Katrina when the facility is without power for 5 days. This is a series that spends 5 episodes outlining how absolutely terrible and dire the situation was at a hospital with no power, no food, no water, no real security, and no plan to get patients out locally and no real support from their corporate offices, then turns around and spends another 3 episodes vilifying a single doctor for the decisions that she may or may not have made during the...
When the Hale-Bopp soared across the sky in 1997, Amy Rose thought it was the start of an amazing new future. Instead, it brought news of a horrible tragedy at the Heaven’s Gate compound just down the road. Amy had always known there was something off about the community she grew up in. I bought this under the assumption that the marketing material that mentioned this young girl lived with a cult that fully believed the happenings of Star Trek had actually happened in some way meant that Trek was going to be more than just a one panel side...
Five young mutants, just discovering their abilities while held in a secret facility against their will, fight to escape their past sins and save themselves. The final Fox mutant movie, they actually mention the X-men by name, but this team is based off a series from the 80’s that ended in 1991 and featured two different teams, the second of which introduced Cable, the character from the second Deadpool movie. The movie features the first team, who were in the vast majority of the issues from the 100+ issue series and was by far my favorite of the two. The...
Jean Grey begins to develop incredible powers that corrupt and turn her into a Dark Phoenix, causing the X-Men to decide if her life is worth more than all of humanity. I’m of the personal opinion that this is a great film with very minor issues, but unfortunately it came out right when the Disney / Fox acquisition was happening and it was neglected from a marketing standpoint and didn’t do as well as I feel it would have it Fox was still advertising it fully. It’s not a bad film for the x-men to go out on and I...
In the 1980s the X-Men must defeat an ancient all-powerful mutant, En Sabah Nur, who intends to thrive through bringing destruction to the world. There’s some really great elements of this film, but some that were unfortunately too close to previous efforts and were, I think, unfairly judged because they were so similar. They also absolutely drowned Oscar Isaac in his make up and his power set was pretty vague. I did enjoy the Magneto stuff that really gave Fassbender some room to thrive, and thrive he did. The hint of the Phoenix during the end battle was also well...
