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, …
Reviews
The conventional wisdom in film (even, or even especially, action/adventure entertainment) is that formula is bad, an exemplar of laziness with a focus more on product than art. The other side is that the formula easily draws audiences in, and breaking it without warning is also bad because it will drive your audience away. No …
Things aren’t going well between Venom and Eddie Brock. Eddie’s rules about not eating human brains begin to fuel resentment in the alien symbiote. And Eddie is being driven nuts by Venom’s chaotic antics. Matters aren’t helped by the fact that Anne has moved on with her life, thus leaving them both depressed. In an …
(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 …
Sometime after the events of Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey, Amanda Waller has a new mission for her misfit band of villains. A coup has recently taken place in a small Central American country. Unfortunately, the country has possession of an extraterrestrial weapon of mass destruction, and the new president has a distinctly anti-American …
Guy is an average fellow living in Free City. He has a job as a banker, follows a regular routine, and interacts with his fellow citizens in the exact same way every single day. But Guy realizes he is longing for something more when he meets the girl of his dreams. He instantly falls for her …
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. …
It started out with a pretty simple idea, right? Create one night a year where everyone can do whatever they want in order to blow off their worst impulses so that they will live as peaceable, law-abiding citizens for the rest of the year. What could go wrong? Obviously, quite a lot and over its …
This Black Widow review should have been written a very long time ago, and I’m not talking about the pandemic-delayed release of the film. The character and Scarlett Johansson deserved this film long ago. Whatever Marvel Studios’ reasons were for waiting until Captain Marvel for a female-fronted superhero film, it was the wrong decision. We …
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 …
Once upon a time, there was a group of underprivileged youth making ends meet by hijacking trucks to steal home electronics. Then one thing led to another until they one day found themselves racing a submarine on an ice flow in order to save the world. Granted, the phrase ‘one thing led to another’ is doing …
There are two types of filmed fantasy (in a structural sense): the ones that explain all of their rules up front and in detail (hopefully because it will matter to the narrative) and the ones that don’t. It is personal preference which one is better, but the latter, by its nature, offers a more magical …
Stylish, calculating, and beautiful with a pair of perfectly-pitched performances from its two leads, Cruella is an apt reflection of the life its heroine (Emma Stone) wants to lead, but maybe a decade too late in getting there. A prequel humanizing a villain from a 50-year-old film who literally has ‘devil’ as part of her …
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 …