In a harmonious double feature, Close Watch continues venturing through the world of movie musicals with an in-depth breakdown of both the 1961 classic West Side Story and Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake. Does the Oscar-winning original still hold up, and was its update worth the creative risk?
Darin Lundberg of NostalgiaCast joins us in this melodic journey through two versions of Maria and Tony’s love story. We’ll explore the rich history of the original film and how it laid the foundation for modern musicals. Then, we’ll dive into the reimagined 2021 adaptation and how it measures up.
These two films have left an indelible mark on the musical genre, and in a conversation nearly as long as the movies themselves, we discuss their impact on the genre, the timeless themes of love and conflict, and how they’ve resonated with audiences over the decades.
After exploring time travel and creating a shared universe with X-Men: Days of Future Past, where could the sequel go next? Why, the gods, of course! For better or worse, 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse pits the Marvel mutants against their most formidable enemy yet: a big, blue Oscar Isaac.
In this episode, Clare Brunton of W-Rated helps us uncover the truth behind director Bryan Singer’s most divisive X-Men installment. We’ll discuss whether the movie is actually unjustly hated, how it serves as a prequel to Singer’s original trilogy, and whether Isaac’s performance hurts or helps.
Join us as we journey back to the Apocalypse and decide whether the movie lives up to its name. Is this where the X-Films finally jumped the shark?
After The Avengers, superhero cinema has never been the same. Suddenly, everything needed to be interconnected, featuring tons of characters and an increasingly complicated timeline. Naturally, the X-Men series retroactively created its own shared universe of sorts with X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Fourteen years after the first film, director Bryan Singer’s film combined the original trilogy cast and that of X-Men: First Class to create a time-travel adventure that raised the bar for what Marvel’s mutants could do onscreen. Or at the very least, it put pressure on the series to be more ambitious.
Film critic Rosa Parra joins Franchise Detours to travel back to 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, a movie that feels like even more of a wild swing nearly a decade later. We’ll discuss its unique place in the series, that epic cast, and how this installment may have doomed the series going forward.
