Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) are husband and wife who farm and raise sheep in Iceland. They seem to live a contented life, in the middle of nowhere where half the year the sun is up at night. One day, Maria and Ingvar deliver a lamb from an expecting sheep, look at…
So, in reviewing The Many Saints of Newark, this must be stated up front – all I’ve seen of The Sopranos is the first episode and the last episode. There’s probably a metric ton of story between the two, and it’s a show that obviously has a huge cultural impact. Even without seeing the show,…
(Disclosure: The author of this review has been friends with C. Robert Cargill, the co-writer of The Black Phone, for many years, going back to the days when they wrote together for a film review website. The author has also been on friendly terms with the film’s director, Scott Derrickson. While the author’s opinions of…
For nearly twenty years, Participant Media has been producing quality films that have been socially relevant while also striving to entertain and educate. Directors like Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, Ana DuVernay, and Stillwater’s Tom McCarthy, under the Participant banner, have found award-winning success with films that feel relevant and urgent, but those filmmakers also know…
Why be one movie when you can be twelve? Who cares if it makes sense; just stuff them all in there. Stick Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Mummy, The African Queen, Pirates of the Caribbean, and a bunch of other movies in a blender, and there you have it. Therein lies the problem with…
The Quest is one of the most well-established story tropes in fiction, going all the way back to Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales and even further. It is not the destination but the journey that guides and dictates the story, as a wanderer learns of their destiny and their place in the world. All storytelling…
Franchise movies with the word origins in the title don’t have the best track record of quality, but that doesn’t stop studios from making them; a case in point is Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins, which promises to tell the backstory of the fan-favorite character from the GI Joe animated series and Hasbro toy line….
Marvel Studios can call Black Widow a Phase IV movie in their Cinematic Universe if they want, but with the exception of the obligatory post-credit scene, this movie is Phase III all the way. You could slot Black Widow right after Captain America: Civil War or right after Doctor Strange, and it would fit perfectly….
With F9 (and let’s face it, this series is just a harbinger of what is to come – all our movies will eventually become mere letters and numbers, like some strange form of Bingo. I am especially excited to see K6, A17, and W23 sometime in the near future) the Fast & Furious franchise has…
When last we saw the Abbott family in A Quiet Place, Evelyn (Emily Blunt), Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and Marcus (Noah Jupe) had figured out a way to fight back against the aliens that had invaded Earth. While the blind aliens were able to track their prey through sound, excessive aural feedback caused them to open…
When it comes to my personal taste in musicals, I can sum it up in a phrase: “Go big or go home.” Movie musicals play with huge emotions, a sweeping grandeur of elegant conflict that can only be expressed through music, song, and dance; full of bodies moving in unison, and what begins as a…
When it comes to crime films, Guy Ritchie has a distinctive style. Most of them are about a group of British lads who manage to stumble into a situation that could either make them a lot of money or get a lot of them killed, but through tenacity, bravado, and the occasional odd circumstance, they…
Pixar films, at their best, are wildly imaginative, speaking to children and adults alike. On paper, most Pixar films have basic scenarios with complex themes – toys that come to life or the monsters under the bed become surrogates for parenthood; a family of superheroes gives way to themes of isolation, self-worth, and our place…
I saw the original Star Wars Holiday Special on television. I remember seeing it; I remember as a nine-year-old kid sitting down and enjoying it — being nine years old, my taste in what was good or bad was pretty fluid — and then wondering why it never played again. As I grew older, the…
It is perhaps fitting that, like the rest of us right now living through (gesticulating wildly) All This, Bill S. Preston, Esquire (Alex Winter), and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) in Bill and Ted Face the Music are pining for simpler, happier times. After all, their greatest moments were 25 years ago, when they saw…
At first blush, 2016’s Train to Busan (buy at Amazon) does not seem to break the mold of the zombie (or “infected” if you prefer) movie. But it’s the details that make Train to Busan one of the best in the genre. Every character has agency, and all get the most with their screen time….
Judd Apatow has a long history of “Lovable Losers” in his work. All the way from Freaks and Geeks to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, even in films like This Is 40 and Trainwreck, Apatow tells stories about broken, juvenile characters who are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the real world. Apatow’s also been accused of glossing…
Spring, 1987. I’m a senior in high school. I’m sitting in the back seat of my friend Bill’s lime-green Chevy Nova. We’re in the parking lot of a Kroger’s, and we’re all a little drunk. Some of us more than others; we’ve been drinking beers, and right before we left the party at Heather’s house,…
There are particular buttons in a movie that, when I see them, automatically elicit an emotional response. It’s Pavlovian – if you make a movie about fathers and sons, for example, I am almost certain to react with tears. It’s just hardwired into my moviegoing DNA. Thus, Pixar Animation Studios’ Onward was almost guaranteed to make…
Horror, more than any other genre, it seems, has its hand directly on the pulse of the here and now. It has to be – our fears are changing and evolving, even while those base instincts remain the same. Our monsters may come with different, more modern costumes, but they are still monsters. The Invisible…