Long-Form Film Criticism and Fiction Writing by Derek Jacobs
There is a moment late in the second act of the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy where everyone is celebrating the success of the Good Vibrations single and lyricist Van Dyke Parks is tasked with describing the next project, which Brian wants to call SMiLE. Parks describes it as a mixture of various artists … Read more
Enter the Void is not an easy movie to watch, and that isn’t simply because it contains a startling killing, gratuitous sex, and a horrific car accident which routinely interjects the narrative. When you watch the most recent film from Gaspar Noé (at least until Love is released later this year), you are cast into … Read more
A sequel to a great film has to find a Goldilocks zone between two guaranteed recipes for failure. Should the sequel exploit the success of the original and attempt to re-tell the same story, it will feel derivative and add nothing. This is epitomized by The Hangover sequels. At the other end of the spectrum, … Read more
There is an undercurrent of awkwardness in almost every large-scale disaster movie that is very difficult to shake, and it is especially evident in San Andreas. The movie very badly wants to tell us the story of heroism in the face of abject disaster – and to do that the narrative necessarily focuses on a … Read more
In this century, properties like Twilight, Vampire Academy, and even things like Underworld and Blade have infantilized the vampire genre. These films are overtly focused on either relationship drama for the girls or supernatural action for the boys, leaving very few recent vampire movies capable of approaching these creatures of the night and their mythology … Read more
The very best B-movies are the ones that do not take themselves too seriously and can create a playfully scary tone, hopefully while people run away from puppets or people in rubber suits. Gore is a plus, too. If these are the criteria, then Zombeavers is a champion. The scene before the opening credits (which … Read more
There are moments in Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland that overflow with joy and awe as the film whisks us away to another world of boundless imagination, possibility, and promise. In fact, the more we are forced to decipher from the fleeting glimpses of Tomorrowland and the more we are encouraged to wonder at what it truly … Read more
Who wants to have exactly zero fun watching Michael Fassbender starve himself to death? If there are any takers, I’d love to point you to Steve McQueen’s Hunger, a dramatization of the 1981 Irish hunger strike. McQueen burst onto the scene with this sobering tale of a five-year-long protest by incarcerated members of the Provisional … Read more
The best action movies succeed by crafting sequences with jaw-dropping visuals and physical stunts, hopefully with characters that we care about and in a way that advances the story. More and more often, action movies in this century lean hard on the crutch of CGI to dazzle us, and usually they are happy to dispense … Read more
There was never a reason to expect the sequel to Pitch Perfect to be very innovative. If you thought that the first movie was a tired exploitation of the popularity of Glee with a half-hearted attempt at comedy, then that’s what you’ll get with this rendition. Similarly, if you were amused by the a cappella … Read more