​“Faces from my past return” croons Billie Eilish over the opening credits of No Time to Die in her signature haunting tone. Both lyric and singer feel wholly appropriate for a Bond (Daniel Craig) himself haunted by his past misadventures. Portraits of Judy Dench’s M overlook MI6, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) continues to color the decisions of 007 and even Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) reappears for one final mission. No Time to Die spends so much time unpacking the history of our longest tenured Bond, yet the film’s lasting legacy may be what it portends for the future of the franchise.

When it won the Palme d’Or back in 2019, on the way to total awards season domination, Parasite began the process of dismantling popular perception of what an awards film could be. Decidedly genre yet nearly unclassifiable as a whole, Bong Joon-ho’s thrilling masterpiece was a far cry from the period drama or stuffy biopic that often garners attention late in the year. If the 2019 Palme d’Or winner blurred the once rigid lines of how we contextual i each film, the 2021 winner completely blew them up.

**TW Suicide is referenced in Dear Evan Hansen and in this review as well**

Humans are social creatures and will go to great lengths to connect with one another. For some that process is easy and natural, but for others connection is a bit tougher. For others still, like the titular lead of Dear Evan Hansen, true human connection can only be forged by gaslighting the family of a deceased classmate.

Getting old is a long and often lonely road, one that Clint Eastwood knows well. More than fifty years have passed since the spaghetti westerns that made Eastwood a household name and nearly twenty since his last Academy Award. Now 91 years old, far closer to the end of that road than the beginning, Eastwood is still making movies. With Cry Macho, like The Mule before it, the cowboy of old Hollywood is starting to grapple with his journey coming to an end.

Anyone who had seen Paul Schrader’s existentially dreadful First Reformed had a pretty good sense that his newest effort would be anything but breezy. Man’s struggle against punishing oppression and his culpability for society’s sins has been the defining feature of Schrader’s long, illustrious career. With The Card Counter, it’s Oscar Isaac’s turn to grapple with the dark corners of his past.

It’s a special Throwback Thursday this week and for the rest of September as Spinning the Reel embarks on another Decades Project. This time we are covering the 1960s on the podcast and right here on the blog. First up is my pick for the month: Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7.

One of the most common, and most often lazy, pieces of film criticism asks “Who is this movie for?” Usually the answer is self apparent and traces back to some studio’s desire to make money quickly. Every so often though, a movie comes around that so violently antagonizes every potential audience that its very existence comes into question. Forgive me for asking, but who is He’s All That for?

​IP runs the world these days, as we have lamented much here at Spinning the Reel. Ten times out of ten Hollywood will choose to mine every last ounce out of something people enjoyed until they’ve stripped that original idea of all its soul, before taking a risk on something unproven. It’s why Disney has released more Marvel movies alone in the last 5 years than original concepts (they’ve released more live action remakes of their animated back catalogue too.) On its face, Free Guy seems to belie all that.

Of all film genres, it seems to me that comedy has the worst reputation when talking about classic movies. It makes sense, humor is far from static. What we find funny now may have been appalling to our grandparents (who among us hasn’t had an awkward experience watching a movie with older family.) Conversely older comedies can feel inaccessible at best and outright racist, sexist or homophobic at worst. Crowd pleasers of old can feel entirely inaccessible now and often lead to the negative image of classic film, so for this week’s throwback lets talk about a nearly 60 year old comedy that still holds up: Dr. Strangelove.
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​Take a look back at the last 15 years of comic book movies and you’ll notice a glaring turning point for the industry. Even before Iron Man landed on screens and sparked cinema’s most prolific franchise, the genre had a distinct influence. The model was Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, a set of self serious, true to the source — and most importantly hugely profitable — adaptations. Christopher Nolan would come along and make a Batman trilogy so dark, brooding — and again insanely profitable — that the formula would feel set in stone. Then, in 2014, James Gunn changed the game.