For some of us who are lifelong Star Wars fans, this has been a strange time in fandom. Our love for a simple story about a kid who becomes a hero has expanded so much over the years. From three movies that told what we thought was a complete story to nine films that have…
Tom George’s See How They Run is a fun, albeit predictable affair. The film tells you exactly what it is from the very start and luxuriates in its ribbing approach to the genre. Clearly reverent of the murder mystery genre, everyone, from cast to crew, seems game in their commitment to carry out this Agatha…
As a Generation X’er, Kevin Smith and I have something of a tempestuous relationship. I saw Clerks at a special early screening when no one knew who this guy from New Jersey was, and I sat down to it, having no idea what the movie was about. When it was over, it felt like I…
The first thing to be said about Zach Cregger’s Barbarian is that you can’t really talk about it; to say too much about it is not just to spoil its inherent surprises but to reduce its actual power. It’s a cinematic version of Fight Club, less of an actual narrative and more akin to a…
Like the moral of a fable, filmmakers have been trying to capture the ephemeral fantasy of the fairy tale on screen for as long as motion pictures have been an art, and for just as long, they’ve turned good stories bad in the attempt. The stylized and heightened reality fairy tales naturally attract the visual…
Perhaps a better title for Beast would be Prey, but that one’s already taken this year. When a group of African poachers kills off a lion’s pride for their pelts, the one remaining survivor goes after the rest of the humans in the area. When a doctor, his two children, and the local game warden…
Yet another Disney+ Marvel Studios series is coming out on August 18, 2022. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law stars Tatiana Maslany as lawyer Jennifer Walters, cousin of Bruce Banner, aka Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). Through an event that I won’t spoil here (and this review will be as spoiler-free as I can make it), Jennifer gets some…
Ladybug is a freelance “snatch and grab” man who has extraordinary bad luck in Bullet Train. But after going away and reassessing his life, he finds himself re-energized and ready to get back in the game. He accepts a new job from his handler, Maria. Ladybug is to get on a bullet train in Japan…
Pretty, lighthearted, charming, and as fleeting as its namesake, Bullet Train is also a pointless exercise in action filmmaking from 25 years ago but has little to offer today. Filled with nameless, unformed characters thrown back in and forth in time in a constant struggle to provide both context and surprise, Bullet Train‘s inability to…
Prey is the best Predator movie since… well, Predator. It deepens and enriches the mythology of the franchise but is also unique and stands on its own as a movie. You can enjoy the callbacks, or you can appreciate a ripping good adventure yarn well told without all the baggage. This will probably be in…
Jordan Peele’s third film, Nope, is another intense thriller, full of context, theme, and flourish. Comparisons to Steven Spielberg or John Carpenter are accurate; Peele uses similar tricks and skills to entertain, frighten, and captivate audiences. He also has a need to tell stories full of metaphor and social awareness, but he also doesn’t want…
Overloaded, overwrought, and overwhelming, The Gray Man movie is the kind of set-piece-oriented, cliché action spectacle that used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter but has become so rare it’s almost alien when placed before us. Wallowing in light characters and an unbelievable plot as much its star charisma and some wildly over-the-top action sequences,…
After the events of Avengers: Endgame, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has joined the Guardians of the Galaxy for adventures across the universe. But as he tries to find himself, he’s unable to attain inner peace and self-fulfillment. However, Thor is forced to set aside his identity crisis when a new threat emerges – Gorr the God…
Thor: Love and Thunder, unlike Taika Waititi‘s previous entry, Thor: Ragnarok, suffers from familiarity. Ragnarok was refreshingly comedic – at that point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it felt like we had seen everything the character of Thor had to offer. But then audiences saw that Chris Hemsworth, if given the opportunity, could be quite…
A kickass female character is generally all I need to get invested in a piece of media. It’s not that hard to hook me. Add in a royal backstory and a kingdom under siege, and I’m all in. Such is the scenario viewers are presented within The Princess. This premise arguably should have set it…
Regency-era romance fans, we are being fed well. Shondaland’s Bridgerton series has captured the hearts and titillated the senses of viewers everywhere, which has had the benefit of getting similar projects greenlit. We have an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion coming to Netflix on July 15, and — at long last — we are finally…
Since Beavis and Butt-Head premiered on MTV back in the 1990s, we’ve gotten all kinds of irreverent animated shows over all kinds of networks. Some are better than others, but all of them owe a debt in some way to these two Highland Texas teenagers just wanting to score, and who both scale the world…
I saw Elvis Presley live in concert. It was March 1974, at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. I was four years old. I don’t remember it very well, but I do have flashes and images in my mind. I remember seeing my parents losing their minds, even though the stage, to my tiny four-year-old…
In director Jim Archer’s new film Brian and Charles, Brian is a lonely middle-aged man living in rural England. Despite his dreary surroundings, he keeps himself busy as an inventor. While Brian has a fantastic imagination, his inventions are less than stellar. He invented a bag with pinecones glued to it, a cuckoo clock on…
The concept for Lightyear is so simple; it’s no wonder Disney-Pixar had difficulty explaining it to the masses: this is the favorite movie of Andy, the little boy from the first three Toy Story films. So it stands to reason that he would go nuts over a Buzz Lightyear doll – excuse me, action figure….