BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
Twenty-four years after the commercially successful television show, “Power Rangers” has been rebooted to a new continuity, but at the same level of quality as the originals. Continue reading ““Power Rangers:” Same Cheese, Different Decade”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
It’s doubtful anybody was suspecting that comedian Jordan Peele, best known for his work on the Comedy Central show Key & Peele, would ever decide to make a horror movie, although anybody familiar with his work might have a guess as to its content.
“Get Out” is, very plainly, a movie with a lot to say about modern race relations in the United States. It doesn’t, however, go after the expected target. Continue reading ““Get Out:” A Horror Film for Modern Racism”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
Probably the hottest burning question about “Logan” was whether or not it benefited from its R rating. The answer is yes. Wolverine finally got to go claws out, lopping off limbs like an eight-year-old playing Fruit Ninja. But perhaps the most impressive part of the action sequences in “Logan” is how unimpressive they are. Logan, deprived of his healing factor and being slowly poisoned by his adamantium-plated bones, is well-described by IGN as “no longer a claws-baring superhero but an aging shadow of his former self.” Every fight scene featuring him is a stressful, painful affair. It seems that, at any time, he might finally be beaten, crumpling to the ground and ending the movie immediately, even outside of battle. This adds investment and stakes to Logan that are, in this cinematic moment, almost foreign to the superhero genre. Continue reading ““Logan:” The “Last Stand” We Needed”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
I probably don’t have to tell you, but DC superhero movies are in a bad spot right now. We haven’t seen a really good one since 2008’s “The Dark Knight.” Movies for kids are in even worse shape, with app adaptations, suspiciously similar premises, and franchises based around tiny yellow idiots. With this in mind, I was understandably nervous about a hundred-minute expansion film based on a gag from “The Lego Movie.” Continue reading “The “Lego Batman” We Deserve”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
Damien Chazelle’s La La Land impresses with spectacular style and seems destined to bring musicals back into the mainstream.
Now, I’m not a musical person. I got my varsity letter playing the cymbals at high school basketball games. The only contemporary musicals I’m familiar with are the musical episodes of TV shows, and the title was the best music pun I could think of, so I wasn’t sure if this was the movie for me. After it was nominated for fourteen Academy Awards and blew up the Internet with its ending, I decided to give it a try. Continue reading “La La Land Shivers with Syncopation”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
WARNING: Due to the nature of this film (an M. Night Shyamalan thriller), this review contains major spoilers. Proceed at your own caution.
After more than a decade of laughably terrible movies, M. Night Shyamalan returns in more-or-less glorious fashion with Split. The premise of the movie is as simple as it is scientifically inaccurate: three teenaged girls are kidnapped by Kevin, a man with dissociative identity disorder (which, as a psychology student, I feel mandated to tell you probably doesn’t exist), and locked in his horrific murder basement as a sacrifice for his hidden, twenty-fourth personality, the Beast. If that name makes you giggle, this is not a movie for you. Continue reading “Split Divides Opinions”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
After seventeen years and a trilogy of disappointments, Star Wars finally gave us something worth watching set before A New Hope. Continue reading “Rogue One: A Prequel Actually Worth Watching”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
I was nervous about Fantastic Beasts, to be honest. The book doesn’t strike me as particularly filmworthy. I didn’t like the last three Harry Potter films (Half-Blood Prince in particular), and they brought back the same director, David Yates, responsible for those movies. J.K. Rowling is also here in her first screenwriting capacity, which was also concerning, but I doubted she could bring bad dialogue tags into a script, so I stayed hopeful. Continue reading “Fantastic Beasts: An Okay First Installment in the Harry Potter Extended Universe”
BY HOLLY FISHER
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers from the film Hacksaw Ridge, starring Andrew Garfield as Desmond Doss.
Up to now, these articles have been focused on World War I, and on wide-reaching elements rather than personal stories. For a change of pace, this article is about the World War II-based film Hacksaw Ridge, which opened in theaters in Juneau Nov. 5. Continue reading “A Time to Remember: Hacksaw Ridge”
BY HOLLY FISHER
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
November is Alaska Native History month, an important time to explore and learn about the culture and history of Alaska’s own people. A part of this month on the UAS campus has been an ongoing film series documenting different elements of Native lives. Though members of the Whalesong staff have not been able to attend all of them, I was able to attend the screening for the new documentary Hunting in Wartime. Continue reading “Hunting in Wartime”
