Cruella is the girl-bossification of the madwoman. Here’s an excerpt from my Vulture review:
“That Cruella is an atrocity with neither purpose nor soul shouldn’t come as a surprise. It is, after all, another in a long line of IP mining nostalgia and better works of the past that Disney is more than happy to keep churning out. Hollywood is an industry too myopic to understand its past and too inert to move into a more artistically dynamic future. But it’s the…
hated having to write this pan. i wanted some joy instead i got a hollow story with terribly shot action and one of the most nonsensical plot lines i’ve seen in a while.
“Sadly, all that glittered in the franchise’s first outing is gone in Wonder Woman 1984. The disappointing sequel highlights not only the dire state of the live-action superhero genre in film, but the dire state of Hollywood filmmaking as a whole.” read my review at vulture.
“I am tired. I am tired of pop-cultural artifacts that render Black people as merely Black bodies onto which the sins of this ragged country are violently mapped. I am tired of suffering being the primary lens through which we understand Black identity. I am tired of being so hungry for Black joy and Black representation that scraps feel like a meal. I am tired of films about slavery refusing to acknowledge the interior lives of Black women even as…
fuck this movie. absolutely atrocious. paper thin characterization. there is no joy to the ostentatious ploys toward spectacle. john david washington has the charisma of a cardboard box. found the abuse storyline for elizabeth debicki’s character frustrating, hollow, and infuriating. this is a truly terrible film on levels of craft, acting, writing, direction, you name it. what an exhausting waste of time.
