Kraven the Hunter Review
The film is too beholden to its superhero roots to get the most out of its disparate pieces.
Megalopolis Review
Megalopolis is a frustrating but enthralling dive into Coppola’s vision of what film (and, by extension, life itself) are, have been and could be.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Review
The original Planet of the Apes was classic ’60s science fiction in the sense that it was focused on its central theme of man’s misuse of the planet and how easily nature could turn against us, but not necessarily on interesting plot or dialogue to carry its ideas to far beyond its natural borders. It…
Madame Web Movie Review
Somewhere lost within the jungles of S.J. Clarkson’s strangely miss-aimed superhero adaption is an idea about the web of life, how it catches people despite themselves and binds them together. Saying that is what Madame Web is about would be overly generous to the finished film. It’s the kind of movie destined for repeat 10…
Marvel Studios’ The Marvels Review
One of the side-effects of the recent supremacy of superhero films has been the ways they have been stretched and mutated to encompass other styles and genres, sometimes successfully (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and sometimes not (Thor: Love and Thunder). In the process they’ve tended to ignore the built in themes and subtext of…
Killers of the Flower Moon Review
“I love money,” Ernest Burkhart says several times in Martin Scorsese‘s adaptation of David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon. “The only thing I love more is my wife.” Whether Ernest’s duplicity is for himself or for his audience, he is certainly lying to someone. In the world of Scorsese it is impossible to grasp…
A Haunting in Venice Review
Kenneth Branagh‘s (Death on the Nile) adaptations of Agatha Christie’s famed Belgian detective get closer and closer to the real intent of the man (and his creator) the further they stray from the original lock step cause and effect of the original creations. Moody and paranoid, A Haunting in Venice pays superficial homage to a…
Blue Beetle Review
Heartwarming and exciting but also overstuffed and tripping over its own feet, Blue Beetle is a frequently charming, frequently frustrating attempt to re-write (or at least re-aim) the classic superhero narrative and intermittently succeeding. When it does succeed it flies high, pulling in pieces from successful forebears like Spider-Man and Iron Man and spinning them…
Gran Turismo Movie Review
Confident and competent, Neill Blomkamp‘s adaptation of the popular racing game is a 100-minute commercial for Sony which still manages to have more under the hood than you would expect. Treading the well-covered ground of the sports film, the Gran Turismo movie isn’t interested in re-inventing either that genre or the video game adaptation; merely…
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One Review
Mission: Impossible idealizes Tom Cruise and his willingness to commit increasingly-dangerous stunts the way Mission: Impossible idealizes Ethan Hunt and his willingness to save the world. The series is a frequently-amazing vehicle for both, filled with spectacular set pieces and the perception that if those are delivered on the rest of the film can be…
Joy Ride Review
Joy Ride, Adele Lim‘s extended road trip through China, is an enticing meditation on the complexity of identity within the immigrant experience that is unfortunately saddled with banal modern comedic tropes that undercut rather than enhance the journey. The phrase ‘immigrant experience’ itself seems overused at this point, a short-hand attempt to quantify a reality…
No Hard Feelings Review
It’s easy to put charismatic actors in a romantic setting and let them quip at each other. It’s difficult to make anyone care for them or their plight or generate genuine charm. It’s easy to create gags that tug and pull at the edges of societal norms, aiming to shock through sheer outrageousness. It’s difficult to resist…
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Review
It seems hard to believe that everything that could be coaxed out of a world-spanning story of giant alien robots battling for supremacy has been even across seven films, but here we are. The newest attempt to revive the Transformers franchise remixes and regurgitates a lot of the pieces from the previous films, attempting to…
The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review
Colorful, energetic and empty as a sugar-laden breakfast cereal, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the kind of kid film that gives kid films a bad reputation. It preys on a younger audiences’ capacity for easy joy, the kind that can be easily filled by bright colors and loud noises, by offering nothing but a…
Scream VI Review
Loud, ludicrous and full of blood and anguish with only a modicum of insight or intelligence, the Scream franchise has long since become what it used to satirize. A copy of a copy of a copy, Scream VI is a degraded photostat lacking all definition, showing only the rough contour of its antecedent but nothing in the interior. Whatever bite…
Magic Mike’s Last Dance Review
Magic Mike’s Last Dance may be the worst film Steven Soderbergh has ever made. Which isn’t to say it is bad, Soderbergh may be incapable of making an out and out bad film even with some of his low budget experiments of the 2000s. But it is thoroughly mediocre in a way Soderbergh has never…
The Legend of Vox Machina Season 2 Review
Alternately exhilarating and hysterical, The Legend of Vox Machina expands its ambitions in its second season, delving deeply into its sprawling cast’s backstory and dramatically upping the stakes at the cost of pace and having emotional beat land. The animated adaptation of the popular Dungeons & Dragons live play Critical Role spent its first season…
M3GAN Review: Has Friendship Evolved?
Like its unliving namesake, M3GAN is a vault of truly terrifying ideas — about who is raising our children in the modern age and what our apathy of their experience could turn them into — wrapped up in so much plastic and synthesized entertainment the horror within remains hidden and impossible to see. While M3GAN…
Avatar: The Way of Water Movie Review
Roughly halfway through the 192-minute running time of Avatar: The Way of Water we watch young Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the semi-messianic miracle child of Weaver’s previous character Dr. Grace Augustine, staring at a crab hole under the water, lost in the miracle of nature to the point all conception of time and space has faded away. Why…
Amsterdam Review: The New David O. Russell Film
Like most period films, David O. Russell’s Amsterdam tries to both look forward to the future and reveal something about the past. It is less about ‘yesterday’ than ‘today’ but unsure which part of ‘today’ it’s aiming at. It wants to remind us of moments in the past to keep us from Santayana-like repetition, but…