Kurt Pankau Dot Com

🎩 And Here's to You... The Crime: Meet the Robinsons The Guilty Party: John Bernstein and Michelle Spitz and Don Hall and Nathan Greno and Aurian Redson and Joe Mateo and Stephen Anderson Overview: Disney writes a love-letter to itself in the form of an exhausting and incoherent time travel story. Why I Hate It... A good rule of thumb I've devised over the years is that the quality of a film is inversely proportional to the number of credited screenwriters. This is not universal by any stretch--a singular visionary can still produce a turd all by his or herself. But as the number creeps above two, you start to see diminishing returns. This has less to do with coherence of vision than it has to do with the nature of editing. As any writer who's done fifteen drafts of the first chapter of their novel can attest, there comes a point where revisions start actively making it worse. And in Hollywood, new revisions are tied to new screenwriters. Screenplay doesn't work? Brin...

⚒️ Stop! Hammer Time... The Crime: The Wall The Guilty Party: Roger Waters, mostly Overview: An ambitious project undermined by a lack of focus and some very specific technical limitations. Why I Don't Completely Hate It... Okay, okay, okay, I have to caveat the shit out of this thing right up front. First, I'll just say that "hate" is a strong word for my feelings about The Wall . I don't enjoy it. I have attempted on multiple occasions to enjoy it and each time I've come up short. This, much like my review of  Sucker Punch , is less of a condemnation and more of an exploration of something that doesn't work for me but that I still kind of admire for what it's attempting. Second, you're probably wondering if I mean the movie or the album and the answer is yes . I'm lumping them together because The Wall  was a multi-media event comprising an album, a film, and a concert experience. And the film and album are so intertwined that it really doesn...

🤵‍♂️ They've Given You a Number and Taken Away Your Name... The Crime:  Live and Let Die The Guilty Party: Guy Hamilton? Roger Moore? Tom Mankeiwicz? Ian Fleming? All of the above? Overview: Roger Moore's first outing as James Bond is... [checks notes] ... a blaxploitation film? Why I Hate It... Let's get one things out of the way from the get-go: Most James Bond movies are bad. It is not a good franchise. For every actual good movie--say, a  Goldeneye  or Casino Royale-- you then get a string of disappointments featuring a lead who is increasingly tired of the role and a story development pipeline that is phoning it in. This death spiral will continue until the movies start to tank at the box office and the whole franchise has to reinvent itself again. Even the classics are worse than you remember. Thunderball  is a snoozefest. On Her Majesty's Secret Service  aspires to tell a story with more weight behind it, but is held back by a lead who has all the s...

🇺🇸 All of Which Are American Dreams... The Crime:  Crippled America The Guilty Party: Donald Trump Overview: He certainly did Why I Hate It... This book was originally published as promo material in advance of the 2016 election. It was almost immediately re-issued under a different title,  Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America . I listened to the audiobook when it was new and the review I wrote at the time is reproduced below. I think the review stands, so I haven't altered it except for minor grammatical tweaks. My feelings have changed slightly, given the context of history, but I'll save those thoughts for afterwards. So without further ado... 90% of this books is exactly what you'd expect: a laundry list of conservative talking points. They're a bit more polished than his stump speeches, but no less simplistic or condescending. The running themes are familiar. Everyone is an idiot except Donald J. Trump. People think you need experience and a nuanced view o...