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 …
Movie Review
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 …
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 …