Several years after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dinosaurs have spread throughout the world. Clashes between mankind, modern wildlife, and the prehistoric beasts have escalated. Black markets dealing in dinosaurs begin to thrive. Governments and environmental groups do their best to intervene and relocate the beasts to sanctuaries, but it is a difficult …
Crimes of the Future marks David Cronenberg‘s return to the horror genre that established him, but if you look closely at the films he’s made over the last twenty years, you could argue that he never really left. Films like A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, on paper, can read more like thrillers, but …
I’m a fan of Bob’s Burgers. It took a while for it to hit me, but when it did, I dived in with a cannonball. It’s the music that did it – there are so many songs in the show that it’s difficult to keep track of them all. Creator Loren Bouchard seems to live …
Bombastic, over the top and unapologetically fun, Top Gun: Maverick is the Platonic ideal of an entertaining studio film, a standard bearer for what those words mean and how they can be achieved. Of course what they do mean is different for different people. Slick, lacking rough edges or idiosyncrasy with dialogue forever in search …
Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a film for no one, interested in neither its source material nor anyone who would have liked said material, embarking on a vain quest for reinvention. The last ten years of tentpole filmmaking have taught us thoroughly the profits and pitfalls of nostalgia. It’s an inducement to the theater …
Alex Garland has set an incredibly high bar for himself. From his directorial debut, Ex-Machina, to the highly-anticipated sophomore feature, Annihilation, to his recent turn on television with the sci-fi thriller Devs, his work in the genre realm has made an impact. This impact was once again felt when the title of his latest film, …
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is Too Much, Too Little. For all the bombast and activity in this movie, the film feels strangely empty, a story in search of thematic meaning and spiritual resonance. This movie isn’t really about anything, while the first one, though smaller in scale, has more on its mind. …
Once upon a time, there was a brilliant new animation company striving to bring new life and feeling — not to mention dollars — to feature animation. And there was DreamWorks Animation, which was supposed to become that company and didn’t. What it did become was the strange other brand to Disney / Pixar, creating …
In a world of superheroes, cinematic universes, sequels, prequels, sidequels, and reboots, Nicolas Cage is his own intellectual property. Constantly working, making an on-the-cheap genre film one month, and a sensitive actor showcase the next, one cannot say that Cage hasn’t kept it interesting these 40 years since he burst on the film scene. He’s …
Equal parts beautiful and desolate like a part of Iceland’s own volcanic countryside, The Northman is auteur Robert Eggers’ most straightforward film, making up in style what it gives up in the complexity of his previous films. Grabbing relentlessly from the tales of Hamlet and Beowulf, Eggers delves back into his continued curiosity about the …
Critics (and I’ve been guilty of this myself) historically dismiss Michael Bay movies. The humor is lowbrow, the noise is cacophonic, the editing feels like the film reels (when they were shot on film) are being sliced up with a razor like a pile of cocaine on Scarface’s desk, and there are more explosions than …
I don’t normally write my reviews with too much personal reflection; I tend to talk about a film’s emotional resonance, whether the filmmakers succeed in their intentions or if they fall short. I’ll get into a bit of plot synopsis, and I normally wrap it up with examinations of the performances and the film’s overall …
Focusing on a strong performance from Chris Pine and the reality of the trauma of war and betrayal, Tamrik Saleh’s The Contractor rises above its contemporaries by doing less instead of more. We all revel in an original take on old material and devalue routine plots for the same reason, but that misses out on …
Matt Reeves’ The Batman is bold, operatic, and swings for the fences. It is huge in scope and goes as big as it needs to be to tell its story. This is not a subtle film, nor does it want to be. Reeves directs this film like it will be his one and only chance …
Gotham City is overrun with crime, corruption, and violence. But the recent arrival of Batman has given the criminal elements of the city pause. Batman can’t be everywhere, but he can make the robbers, thugs, and villains fear every shadow he may be lurking in. Things change when a new serial killer murders the Mayor …
“Sometimes what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger. Sometimes it just should have killed you.” Will Ferrell wrote that eleven years ago, and while it was about President George W. Bush at the time, they may as well have been Uncharted which started its long, tortuous assent to the big screen at the same …
The meet cute has been a staple of the romantic comedy since at least Clara Bow bumped into Antonio Moreno. After 100 years of cinema, though, enough variations of it have been tried that even the many worlds map of the romcom multiverse has become a flat circle. The options for most filmmakers now are …
Everything about Hercule Poirot is fake. That is a good thing. It’s true of the man — from the mustache he wears but lies about why to his reasons for doing things — and true of his latest celluloid adventure. Kenneth Branagh‘s adaptation of Death on the Nile puts on as much of a false …
As one does not simply walk into Mordor, one does not simply review Jackass Forever without context. These movies and television show are the definition of “Not for everyone.” If there’s any story arc that links these films, it’s all what has happened offscreen. One of the members has passed away. Another, involved with litigation …
While on a routine Space Shuttle mission in 2011, NASA astronauts Jocinda Fowl and Brian Harper experience a disaster that kills one of their crewmembers and disables their spacecraft. Amidst the chaos, Harper is the only one to see the cause – a strange alien cloud. After destroying their shuttle, the alien entity heads for …