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…
Are you vying for some more action coming off your viewing of John Wick: Chapter 4? Well, Netflix has something up their sleeve with the arrival of Kill Boksoon. Starring Crash Course in Romance‘s Jeon Do-yeon, writer/director Byun Sung-hyun crafts a film that feels familiar, yet still manages to excite with its beautifully-choreographed and shot…
Some warning: the first three rows reading this review may get some nerd on them. I normally hate doing this sort of thing, talking about how much a property means to me – all those personal anecdotes when a Star Wars or a comic book movie comes out and how much the source material was…
Not long after the events of Shazam!, Billy Batson and his foster siblings are still trying to figure out the whole superhero thing… with mixed results. While they manage to save many lives, there’s plenty of collateral damage along the way. Billy does his best to lead his new superhero team, but he has his…
Based on statistics that I can in no way verify, if the internet counters are accurate, the total amount of kills in the John Wick franchise (at least before its latest entry, John Wick: Chapter 4) stands at 299. That’s important, because the 300th kill is a significant one, and sets the events of the…
I may be showing my age a bit with this review. It’s easy to forget, in this modern age of cinematic universes and big budget extravaganzas, just how much Star Wars shifted the paradigm, and how much movie studios tried to follow in its success in the 1980s. A lot of it died on the…
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…
When Sylvester Stallone announced that he would not be appearing in Creed III, many (including myself) wondered where the series would go without Rocky Balboa as the father figure/mentor to Michael B. Jordan‘s Adonis Creed. It was also announced, at roughly the same time, that Jordan would be taking over directorial duties this time around,…
If you’re already planning on sitting down to a movie called Cocaine Bear this weekend, there isn’t much more to be said. They got you, you bought into the premise, and you’re perfectly happy with wherever the movie takes you, as long as the promise of the title is kept: there will be a bear,…
It’s been a few years since Carnival Row Season 1 debuted on Prime Video. In the first season, viewers were introduced to a fictional world of fantasy, pain, and relatable struggles surrounding class, race, and love. While Season 1 had issues with pacing and juggling too many plots, the world building and romance between Orlando…
“It’s not you, it’s me.” That’s a phrase we hear during a break-up that’s supposed to make the pain go down a little easier. I’m not the same person when we met. My needs and wants have changed. You’re great, you haven’t done anything wrong. We’ve just grown apart. Things like that. Well, after Ant-Man…
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…
M. Night Shyamalan‘s biggest strength as a director is his ability to orchestrate and sustain tension. It’s what makes The Sixth Sense so extraordinary – not the famous twist, but the subtle, inexorable power and pull the movie has. The film is also helped by two very strong performances, and Shyamalan wisely anchors the film…
The rich exploiting the impoverished is nothing new. Seeing how they find new ways to skirt the rules of the law — both in fiction and reality — can depress. However, in Brandon Cronenberg‘s Infinity Pool, we are both witnesses and gluttons of punishment, taking in the gradual breaking down and rebuilding of Alexander Skarsgård‘s…
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…
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…
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…
Some time after the events of Avatar, Jake Sully and Neytiri have started a family. Their children are not only their biological offspring but adopted orphans as well. Kiri is the child of Dr. Grace Augustine’s avatar, who was unexpectedly pregnant while in suspended animation. They have also adopted a young human nicknamed Spider, who…
Summer, 1975. I am 5 years old. I can remember images, feelings, and memories of memories. My father, on a Saturday, says that we’re going to a movie. It’s a fishing movie. My father loves fishing. My entire family does, although I have to say it never quite grabbed me, not as a child, and…
The world of fairytales is back and magic is afoot. Back in 2007, we all fell in love with Giselle, the fairytale princess played by Amy Adams. She was transported to New York City and fell in love with Robert (Patrick Dempsey). They and Robert’s daughter Morgan (Gabriella Baldacchino) have been living their happily ever…