Ridley Scott's cinematic Waterloo

Director Ridley Scott is no stranger to historical dramas/epics, whether it be his filmmaking debut in THE DUELISTS, the Oscar winning GLADIATOR, the very underrated KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, or - most recently - his RASHOMON-esque THE LAST DUEL.  It seems only inevitable that he would tackle a film about Napoleon Bonaparte and explore the French leader's rise to power as a military commander and eventual Emperor and his later downfall...

HYPNOTIC (R) 

A not entirely transfixing mind bending thriller

Robert Rodriguez's HYPNOTIC plays an awful lot like Christopher Nolan for dummies as far as the mind-bending sci-fi thriller genre is concerned.  Its story - also co-scripted by the director and an apparent passion project for the last twenty years - involves a Texas-based police officer that uncovers a vast society of mind-controlling criminals.  I think that the film's overall premise is modestly intriguing, but as its story progresses it's sure hard to ignore how it's basically a weird and mostly uninspired hodgepodge of far better and more memorable genre efforts... 

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES

(PG-13)  1/2

Penem's phantom menace

I think it would be hard for anyone - myself included - to not go into THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES with a cynical mind.  After all, the previous four HUNGER GAMES pictures - all based on the novels by Suzanne Collins - featured a self-contained storyline with a beginning, middle, and end (well, make that a two-part ending) that chronicled Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen and her grassroots attempts to overthrow a vile post-apocalyptic dictatorship.  Her story was told with mostly successful results... 

THE MARVELS (PG-13) 

Oh captain, my captain!

I'll start this review of THE MARVELS - the 33rd entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - by stating that we need more female representation in genre films, with superhero pictures being no exception. Even though the MCU was seriously late to the inclusion game with 2019's CAPTAIN MARVEL (it took them twenty films and ten years in to have their own solo female driven outing...better late than never, I guess), it was a move that should have been welcomed with open arms... 

Fassbender and Fincher on the hunt

THE KILLER's release - in a limited theatrical run and a much larger streaming one via Netflix - should be a cause for celebration, seeing as it re-teams the director and writer of SEVEN in David Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker respectively.  They base their latest collaboration on the French graphic novel series of the same name by Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon, which in turn delved into the titular assassin that gets into series trouble after one of his planned hits goes bad...

Posted November 29, 2023

This doc doesn't go the distance

One thing that I've always noticed about Sylvester Stallone in many of his interviews over the years is how well spoken and intelligent he is, not to mention that he has a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor about his own limits as an actor and some of his more questionable film role choices during his six decade career.  That, and at just two years away from 80, he still looks shockingly carved out of granite (although he does freely admit that the years are obviously catching up with him)...

Posted November 16, 2023

An engaging, but flawed take on a Herculean athletic feat

Netflix's new biographical sports drama NYAD is based on the unbelievable true story of Diana Nyad, who became a media sensation in the 1970s for her Herculean feats of swimming around Manhattan island (28 miles!) in record time and - even more impressively - swimming from The Bahamas to Florida (an astounding 102 miles).  NYAD doesn't focus on those gargantuan achievements of endurance swimming, but rather on her well publicized efforts to swim from Cuba to Key West (which she attempted before in 1978, but failed)...and at the ripe age of 64...

Posted November 16, 2023

An unsettling historical epic of an unspeakable tragedy

There are multiple themes afoot in Martin Scorsese's inordinately powerful KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.  On one level, it's a harrowingly bleak portrait of a historical tragedy that many viewers may not be familiar with.  It's also - as many of the 81-year-old Oscar winning director's past films are - about how the pursuit of power and wealth completely robs people of their soul and humanity.  Beyond that, the film is also a chronicle of a family and many of its damaged components, some of which involve deeply violent and dangerous men...

Take two of these and don't call me in the morning

The new Netflix American crime drama PAIN HUSTLERS - based on the fact-based book of the same name by Evan Hughes - chronicles the massive rise and spectacular fall of a pharmaceutical company that went to great - and highly illegal - lengths to pedal a fentanyl-based liquid spray to the masses.  The film certainly tells a highly worthwhile story that's not only ripped from the headlines, but has legitimate things that it wants to say about the corruption of companies like this that try to profit off of the pain and misery (and sometimes life and death struggles) of sick people ...

Posted November 8, 2023

Taking on the death care industry

I usually don't like to throw out descriptors like they don't make 'em like this anymore when it comes to movies, but that simply came to mind for me all while watching THE BURIAL, a new fact-based period legal drama.  The film is based on the true story of a slick and personal injury lawyer named Willie E. Gary, who in the mid-90s decided to represent a financially devastated Mississippi-based funeral home operator named Jeremiah O'Keefe, who wanted to sue a large Canadian funeral home company over a contractual dispute...

Posted October 30, 2023

HAUNTED MANSION (PG-13) 

A scarily mediocre retread

Through every single minute of watching the supernatural horror comedy HAUNTED MANSION, I found myself constantly asking one simple question: How many times does Disney feel the need to go back to the well for creative inspiration?  If you had feelings of deju vu while watching the House of Mouse's lastest endeavor, then you're clearly not alone.  Yes, this is not the first time that the studio has looked to one of their theme park attractions for material to filter to the silver screen... 

Back to the Tickle Trunk

With the exception of my parents, Ernie Coombs - aka Mr. Dressup - was the first person that I can consciously recall looking up to in life. For those growing up in Canada, he was a beloved and respected fixture on his daytime children's television program that ran on the CBC for 4000 episodes and over four decades.  Alongside his loyal puppet sidekicks in Casey and Finnegan - as well as a host of other human co-stars over the years - Mr. Dressup became a part of must-see viewing for many a Canuck kid growing up in the late 1960s and onward...

Posted October 20, 2023

MEG 2: THE TRENCH

(PG-13)  1/2

A bigger, sillier and dumber...but not necessarily better - sequel

How does one even begin a review of MEG 2: THE TRENCH?  I dunno...but I'll try.  Parts of me thought that this sequel to 2018's THE MEG (based, in turn, on Steve Alten's novel) was mindless drivel.  Worse yet, the film kind of senselessly meanders around during its mid-sections and delves into a fairly disinteresting subplot of an evil underwater drilling operation that the makers here think is a lot more compelling than it is.  There's a clunkiness to the storytelling this go-around that made me check my watch a whole hell of a lot... 

ASTEROID CITY (PG-13)  1/2

Anderson showing little method to his madness 

Watching ASTEROID CITY - like many of Wes Anderson's previous films - is akin to looking at a meticulously constructed model set where every conceivable building block has been painstakingly thought through, connected, and executed into its final form.  This is the 54-year-old director's eleventh film, and it just might be one of his most gorgeously realized, in a pastel-hued storybook kind of manner... 

THE CREATOR (PG-13) 

A grandly envisioned and ambitiously thoughtful man vs. machine sci-fi epic

Writer/director Gareth Edwards' THE CREATOR is in the great tradition of a seemingly dying breed of science fiction that both stimulates the mind and the senses.  It deals with a post-apocalyptic and future war between mankind and AI robotic beings, which most definitely feels like familiar material for this genre (films as far ranging as THE MATRIX to THE TERMINATOR to BLADE RUNNER to EX MACHINA have tackled such subjects in their own respective ways)... 

It's no ordinary love...

Writer/director Chloe Domont's FAIR PLAY is a fascinating piece of hybrid cinema that also feels like a throwback to the types of genre films that we haven't seen since perhaps the 1990s.  It's an utterly intoxicating and razor sharply written workplace thriller set in the stressful world of finance analysts.  It's also an expose on male/female power dynamics, the fragility of the male ego, and the trials and tribulations of women trying to attain dominance in their occupation that's almost exclusively a male-dominated one...

Posted October 9, 2023

With or without you

A thematic constant in all of writer/director John Carney's films has been the value of music and music appreciation as a form of therapy, which has been utilized to get his characters out of one existential rut or another.  This was true in his Oscar winning ONCE from 2007 and was especially prevalent in his joyous SING STREET from 2016, which told a tale of a young Irish lad in economically ravished mid-80s Dublin that decided to embrace music and make videos with his pals (it remains one of my favorite films of the last decade)...

EXPENDABLES (R) 1/2

Time to send this franchise to the retirement home

EXPENDABLES 4 (or EXPEND-FOUR-BLES to phonetically read its title) is pure excrement, a sequel made all the more scandalously bad when one stops and considers its cost to quality ratio.  This third sequel in the series of throwback action pictures that Sylvester Stallone ushered in way, way back in 2010 cost a reported $100 million dollars to produce.  That's a one with two zeroes afterwards followed by the word million... 

ELEMENTAL (PG) 

A well-intentioned and made, but waterlogged Pixar feature

Nearly every time that I screen a new Pixar animated effort, I frequently ask myself "What has happened to this once dominant studio?"  If you look at the zenith of their creative powers - from the release of the first TOY STORY in 1995 and everything they made in the near twenty years after that - then it's apparent that they were undeniable pioneers in animation, churning out one iconic and critically adorned classic after another... 

NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU 

(PG-13)  1/2

Now that's what I call a non-verbal close encounter!

The alien invasion genre has become so saturated over the decades that it has become that much more difficult for any new filmmaker to come around and inject some much needed revitalizing freshness into it.  There have been a few recent attempts that audaciously bucked stale trends and conventions (the micro-budgeted STARFISH from A.T. White and THE VAST OF NIGHT from Andrew Peterson unequivocally proved that they can successfully exist on their own amidst a crowed genre packed filled with bloated and expensive blockbusters)... 

An economy class romcom

I'll open this review of the new Netflix-produced romcom LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT with a question.  Why the hell is this film not called LOVE AT FIRST FLIGHT?  After all, the plot revolves around a young couple that has a meet-cute at an airport and then share the same flight, falling deep into mutual attraction with one another along the way.  When they arrive at their destination they become separated and (for reasons I'll get to in a bit) they have no idea how to reach one another afterwards...

Posted September 29, 2023

A HAUNTING IN VENICE 

(PG-13)  1/2

Call off the police...Hercule Poirot is on the case!

"After death comes…nothing."  So says Kenneth Branagh's heavily mustached and even more heavily Belgian-accented detective Hercule Poirot during one particularly tense exchange with a medium in A HAUNTING IN VENICE, the third in the actor/director's trilogy of films based on Agatha Christie's celebrated whodunit murder/mystery novels.  "I don't believe in psychics," he later bemoans... 

THE LITTLE MERMAID (PG)

 I don't want to be a part of this world

Disney has come under considerable fire - and very rightfully so - for their cash-grabbing and creatively lazy attempts to milk their iconic animated film catalogue and remake them into live action iterations.  It has been a pretty never-ending cycle over the last few years, and one that I find cynical and desperate.  That's not to say that I haven't liked some of these remakes (I enjoyed Kenneth Branagh's opulent CINDERELLA redo and thought that David Lowery's PETE'S DRAGON significantly improved upon the original)...

THE ADULTS (R)  1/2

It's arrested development...

I can certainly see what Dustin Guy Defa's THE ADULTS was trying to do and say, but what I was left wondering when I finished my screening was whether or not the overall film worked on at its intended levels.  Some of the core ideas at play here are young adults struggling to find ways to be open and honest in their communication with one another within a fragile family unit, so they employ unique outlets to do so.  On some levels, THE ADULTS is a fairly sharp portrait of family dysfunction... 

THE EQUALIZER 3 (R)  1/2

Threequelized

Midway through THE EQUALIZER 3 - the third and reportedly last film in this action thriller series based loosely on the 1980s TV series of the same name - we witness ex-CIA agent and assassin Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) having a confrontation with some Italian mobsters that are terrorizing patrons in restaurant.  Never mind the hows and the whys, just know that McCall is confronting mafia scum.... 

NO HARD FEELINGS (R) 

A different kind of hunger games

There's a moment during the new comedy NO HARD FEELINGS that made me both gasp in shock and uncontrollably laugh.  It involves star Jennifer Lawrence in what would easily be considered a thanklessly committed performance. Her character is skinny dipping in a nearby lake with her much younger date and soon discovers that some rowdy troublemaking teens start mocking them while confiscating their clothes...

Posted September 14, 2023

GRAN TURISMO (PG-13) 

This ain't no game

GRAN TURISMO traverses down some of the most overused underdog sports movie clichés that are out there.  There's the young, misunderstood, but gifted outcast that struggles to gain acceptance, even within his own family unit.  There's the bitter and older mentor coach figure that begrudgingly takes in this protégée.  There's the hot-headed, thoroughly talented, and potentially unstoppable opponent that the underdog must conquer...

Posted September 5, 2023

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS

(R) 

Couples therapy...the hard way

Writer/director Nicole Holofcener's YOU HURT MY FEELINGS centers on one fundamental conundrum that just about any married person can relate to: Is it okay to lie to your spouse if it means sparing their feelings?  We're not talking a gross relationship ending lie, like one involving infidelity, for example. We're talking about the seemingly innocuous little white lies that are told to our significant others in order to spare them any personal embarrassment or sense of failure...

Posted September 5, 2023

BLUE BEETLE (PG-13) 

A super hero bug's life

Just before I screened BLUE BEETLE - the 14th installment (well...maybe...more in a bit) of the DC Extended Universe, I checked out Netflix's HEART OF STONE.  My main issue with that Gal Gadot spy thriller vehicle was that it seemed like it was lazily pilfering from the genre playbook and offered up a greatest hits package of well worn and overused troupes.  I felt the exact same way as I exited BLUE BEETLE.  Here's a super hero origin film that feels like so many countless others that we have received over the years...

Posted August 23, 2023

A less than rock solid MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE clone

NETFLIX's HEART OF STONE is the kind of film that feels like it was hastily cobbled together by writers that simply stapled dozens upon dozens of genre clichés on the wall and then proceeded to randomly throw darts at them to see what they could include.  It's clear that the makers here were attempting to do two things...

Posted August 23, 2023

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER (R) 1/2

A creature feature with a different kind of bite

I perhaps don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of films featuring Dracula that have come out in my lifetime.  Bram Stoker's 19th Century literary creation has seen so many cinematic permutations that it leaves each new one coming out in an unenviable position to either up the ante or find a new fresh prerogative for the material. We received a heavily comedic (and novel) take earlier this year in RENFIELD (which showcased the iconic bloodsucker, but was told from his minion's perspective)...

Posted August 23, 2023

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM (PG) 1/2

They're the world's most fearsome fighting team

The new Nickelodeon produced computer animated film TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM is one of the late summer film season's most refreshing surprises.  It also just might be the best TMNT movie ever made.  That might not entirely be saying much, seeing as this 1980s Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird comic book creation (that later spawned a massive toyline and animated series) has not had the most consistent of runs on the silver screen...

Posted August 17, 2023

TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS (PG-13) 1/2

Fall of the franchise

I found myself asking way, way too many questions during my patience testing screening of TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS.  Let me give you some examples.  There's an Autobot named Stratosphere that comes in the form of a hopelessly broken down World War II cargo plane.  Based on the world building provided by the last TRANSFORMERS outing (2018's not great, but step in the right direction BUMBLEBEE), this extraterrestrial and shape-shifting machine intelligence has been on Earth for less than a decade...

Posted August 17, 2023

A crazy story of one of the craziest of crazes

There is something about the 2023 film year that has featured a shocking number of period-specific films that have been about consumer products, in one form or another.  The best of the bunch would easily be Ben Affleck's AIR, which dealt with a then struggling Nike desperately trying to nab one of the biggest rookie clients of all time and build a shoe brand around him.  The second best was the recently released BLACKBERRY, which honed in on the spectacular rise and dreadful fall of an early pioneer of smart phone tech...

BARBIE (PG-13) 1/2

C'mon Robbie, let's go party!

BARBIE is a real cinematic curveball that's thrown at audiences.  Going into it, I was fully expecting yet another cynical-minded attempt of brand extension to the silver screen to peddle toys to the masses.  And the Barbie line from Mattel is, no doubt about it, an iconic fashion doll and toy empire unlike just about any other that emerged in the 20th Century, meaning that it would only be a matter of time before someone attempted a live action film iteration of it.  What's ultimately astounding about director Greta Gerwig's BABRIE is the manner it defies nearly all expectations...

Posted August 5, 2023

OPPENHEIMER (R) 

American Prometheus

Very few films use close-ups as powerfully as Christopher Nolan's OPPENHEIMER.  There's one shot in particular that seems to linger on J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) for what seems like an unsettling eternity as it slowly dollies in.  We see a man who's simultaneously ravaged by unending guilt and despair for the future of humanity.  He's helpless.  He knows that his overseeing of the construction of the world's first atomic bomb will not have a peaceful ending...

Posted August 5, 2023

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - 

DEAD RECKONING: PART 1 

(PG-13) 

This series has not self destructed seven films in...

Your mission - if you choose to accept it - is to acknowledge that MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE just might be the finest movie franchise in history and that star Tom Cruise is easily the most fanatically committed showman working in the industry.  I don't think that this is a hyperbolic proposition. Ever since it started way, way back in 1996 with the Brian De Palma directed series introductory chapter (based, many forget, on the classic TV series of the same name)...

Posted July 26, 2023

KANDAHAR (R) 

A deja vu Gerard Butler action thriller

KANDAHAR has a few things going against it.  Firstly, it wants to have its cake and eat it too in terms of yearning to simultaneously be a thrilling Gerard Butler action film vehicle and a sobering take on modern war and America's dicey involvement in foreign countries.  Secondly, the film is shockingly similar to the much better and recently released GUY RITCHIE'S THE COVENANT, which also explored an American military man and his relationship with a foreign translator...

Posted July 26, 2023

THE SUPER MARIO BROS MOVIE 

(PG) 1/2

Mamma mia...this movie needs a firmware update!

It's odd that the word movie is in the title of THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE.  This is barely a movie.  This is more of a 90-plus minute nostalgia-baiting commercial ad to peddle a well cherished brand.  Of course, I'm talking about Nintendo's iconic mascot in Mario, who began so modestly as a creation by Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto in the early 80s and has exploded into seemingly every facet of the media world over the last four decades...

Posted July 21, 2023

THE POPE'S EXORCIST (R) 

The power of Christ compels Crowe

The new supernatural horror thriller THE POPE'S EXORCIST is loosely (and I'm guessing ever so loosely) based on the real life exploits of Father Gabriele Amorth, who was the chief exorcist for the Vatican and, yes, the Pope himself.  Taken from two books penned by the Father, THE POPE'S EXORCIST delves into his devil cleansing exploits in the 1980s, which gained him a fair amount of recognition and publicity.  It has been said that he has done tens of thousands of exorcisms.  Okay, then.  Sure.  I'll bite...

Posted July 21, 2023

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (PG-13) 

Raiders of the continental drifts

"A few times in my life, I've seen things," says the raspy-voiced and nearly 80-years-old Indiana Jones at one key and humorous point in INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY.  "I drank the blood of Kali...I've been tortured with voodoo...I've been shot nine times!"  He boasts this to his partner while scaling a very steep rock wall in search of a specific piece of antiquity at a time in his life when he should be in a retirement home.  I would also add that he drank from the cup that Jesus Christ used during the Last Supper and even had a close encounter with interdimensional beings...

Posted July 13, 2023

BIG GEORGE FOREMAN

(PG-13) 

A sports biopic of small returns

George Foreman's career made so many bizarre twists and turns that I doubt even the craziest Hollywood script doctors could have dreamt them up.  Just consider this: He went from an impoverished childhood to a boxing wanna-be to 1968 Olympic Gold medallist in lightning fast ascension.  He then scored a shocking 1973 second round knock-out of then undefeated and seemingly unbeatable heavyweight champion Joe Fraizer.  At the top of his form, Foreman lost his championship to Muhammad Ali in the legendary "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974...

Posted July 13, 2023

GUY RITCHIE'S THE COVENANT 

(R) 1/2

Men of honor on both sides of the fence

If it wasn't for the fact that his name is in the title, I would have been hard pressed to know that director Guy Ritchie was the man behind - to quote its full title - GUY RITCHIE'S THE COVENANT.  I mean that as a sincere compliment. Ritchie's recent resume has been a mixed bag affair.  For every well oiled WRATH OF MAN and THE GENTLEMEN there have been hopelessly misguided efforts like his live action ALADDIN remake for Disney or - more recently - his easily forgettable espionage thriller OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE (yeah...who would remember that title?)...

Posted July 4, 2023

BLACKBERRY (R) 1/2

How even the mightiest can fall

Back in the day, I absolutely loved my BlackBerry Torch.  It was my first smart phone.  I thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread.  It had that large screen that you could flip up with your finger to reveal a physical keyboard underneath.  And those clickable tactile buttons!  I dug those the most.  For a person that made a relatively late transition into smart phones, I thought this device was a game changer.  The power of a computer in my pocket.  At the time, I honestly thought nothing could top it.  Annnnnnnd then I got my first iPhone...and I never picked up a BlackBerry again...

Posted July 4, 2023

THE FLASH (PG-13) 

Barry Allen and the multiverse of madness

THE FLASH has its roots deeply embedded in The Butterfly Effect, which refers to the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world might create changes in the atmosphere that could drastically alter severe weather patterns in another location.  In short: tiny and localized changes can have far-reaching implications.  In this 13th installment of the DCEU, Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) realizes that being the fastest man on the planet has granted him the ability to run so fast that he can travel back in time...

Posted June 28, 2023

Raking in a high body count...again!

Netflix's EXTRACTION 2 features the new adventures of Tyler Rake (what an amazingly preposterous name), the ex-special forces soldier with the Australian Army that later became a mercenary for hire that very much appeared to be dead at the end of the 2020 franchise introductory installment.  But - wouldn't ya know it? - he did manage to survive the hellish ordeal of his last mission and engages in a very Rocky Balboa-esque training montage to hilariously recover very quickly from his near fatal wounds in order to take his next dangerous assignment..

Posted June 28, 2023

A GOOD PERSON (R) 1/2

How to lose friends and alienate people

Zach Braff has had a disappointingly inconsistent career behind the camera, to say the least.  His 2004 cult hit GARDEN STATE was such an auspicious filmmaking debut and one that spoke to me so much that I put it on my list of that year's Ten Best Films.  I thought the possibilities were fairly limitless for Braff, but it would take a decade before he would make another film, which came in the form of the very publicly crowdfunded WISH I WERE HERE, which regrettably didn't capture his rookie film's novelty and was a largely missed opportunity...

Posted June 24, 2023

MASTER GARDENER (R) 

Schrader's impeccably landscaped drama

It's safe to say that the 76-year-old Paul Schrader has been on one of the best rolls of his directorial career.  As a screenwriter, he's arguably among the finest in his craft, having penned two of the greatest films of all time in Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL, but he's often overlooked for this work behind the camera as well.  One thematic element that seems to coalesce through many of his films is that of doomed men that are trying - via various unique means - to find some sort of personal salvation...

Posted June 24, 2023

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (PG)  1/2

With great universe hopping power comes great universe hopping responsibility

Even though I liked 2018's SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, I honestly wasn’t as completely enamored with it as most, seeing as it sometimes distractingly bombarded audience members with too many fourth wall breaking self-aware gags for its own good that distracted from the whole.  However, I'll still wholeheartedly concede that (a) this Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman directed animated film gave proper and due time to Miles Morales as the main Spidey protagonist, the first mixed-race super hero ever...

Posted June 16, 2023

CHAMPIONS (PG-13)  1/2

Hoop Dreams: The Farrelly version

I'll defend the Farrelly Brothers with respect to the fact that they have arguably done more for inclusiveness on their movie sets and productions for people with disabilities than anyone else in Hollywood.  Ever since 1996's uproarious KINGPIN (still their greatest comedy), this sibling filmmaking duo have gone out of their way to champion people with disabilities and putting them in their films in various forms in front of and behind the camera.  Everything from actors with spina bifida to wheelchair-bound performers to those with developmental and/or intellectual disabilities have shown up in bit roles, extras, and even supporting characters...

Posted June 16, 2023

FAST X (PG-13)  1/2

Running on fumes as it crosses the series finish line

I cannot believe that we've made it to TEN (count 'em...TEN!!!) entries in the FAST AND FURIOUS series.  Where has the time gone?  It's almost unfathomable to think that this once simple, but effective POINT BREAK clone from 22 year years ago began so modestly as a tale of underground street racers and DVD player thieves.  Over the course of the last two decades, the exploits of Dominic Toretto and his "family" have seen crazy levels of unpredictable evolution, with each sequel - some great, some good, and some not so good - finding ways of upping the ante of ridiculous stunts and action set pieces...

Posted June 7, 2023

SISU (R)  1/2

A Finnish gold prospecting inglorious basterd!

SISU - as its opening title cards reveal - is a nearly untranslatable word, but can be best identified as one that implies unbreakable determination.  This title is fitting.  SISU is one of the great blunt force trauma action pictures of recent memory, one that juicily mixes the real historical horrors of World War II with the action hero pictures of the 1980s with a sensationalistic B-movie sensibility.  It has a deceptively simple-minded, but efficiently told story...

Posted June 7, 2023

COCAINE BEAR (R)  1/2

Failing to get high on its own supply

I checked my watch very early on at my screening of COCAINE BEAR.  I was barely 30 minutes into it and the thought (at the time) of making it through its next 65 minutes felt pretty daunting to me.  Then...I realized something profound:  I don't like cocaine.  I don't like bears.  I  don't like bears high on cocaine.  I didn't find bears high on cocaine to be funny.  I didn't find bears high on cocaine to be scary.  I'm just saying NO to COCAINE BEAR...

Posted May 29, 2023

PAINT (PG-13) 

A not-so happy accident

If you go into PAINT (as I did) completely blind, then it would be easy to assume that this is some sort of biopic of public broadcasting art legend Bob Ross, who became a cult phenomenon for his soft spoken inspirational painting show that ran on PBS for many years up until his death in 1995.  His nationally syndicated THE JOY OF PAINTING (1983-1994) has recently been picked up by modern day streaming services to play it on permanent rewind for a whole new generation of Ross aficionados...

Posted May 29, 2023

Hell hath no fury like a mama scorned

Blandness taints Netflix's new action thriller THE MOTHER...on multiple levels.  Just look at its title.  It's dull.  It doesn't inspire excitement.  Then look at its overall storyline (amazing, the product of not one, not two, but three writers) that travels down just about every obligatory revenge genre cliché imaginable.  Then consider how it's a somewhat lazy and uninspired hodgepodge of multiple other espionage/assassin franchises (and far better ones, at that)...

Posted May 25, 2023

The secret of my success

There's a moment in the sensational new Apple-produced documentary STILL: A MICHAEL J. FOX MOVIE that does an incredible job of encapsulating just what a good sport the actor is and what a wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor he possesses.  It involves a riotously funny clip from the series CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, which has the star playing himself opposite Larry David.  Fox hands over a bottle of soda to David, but when the latter opens it, the contents gush out and explode all over him...

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: 

VOLUME 3 (PG-13) 

A trilogy closer mixtape worth exploring

Looking back, the very first GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY back in 2016 was a small-scale miracle. What writer/director James Gunn achieved was not easy.  He took a series of what would be best described as B or C-list Marvel Comics characters and somehow made their cinematic adventures work (and work marvelously) and, in the process, the resulting film became a box office bonanza.  To say that this first film was a huge gamble for the MCU is a huge understatement...

Posted May 16, 2023

SCREAM VI (R)  1/2

Ghostface takes Manhattan

There's a current WGA strike occurring in Hollywood right now, which has led to some online chatter about the potential implementation of A.I. programs to finish work off that actual human writers started.  Yeah, I l know...that sounds utterly asinine.  How could an A.I. program capture the heart and soul of a person constructing a screenplay?  Beats me.  Then I watched SCREAM VI - yes...six! - and afterwards I noticed that it was written by James Vanderbuilt and Guy Busick (as well as being directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who helmed the last SCREAM in 2022)...

Posted May 16, 2023

ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT'S ME MARGARET. (PG-13) 

Something tells me that He's listening...

I'm often asked by many:  What makes any particular film great?  That's an inordinately difficult question to answer, but one metric - among many - that I've used over the years is that a great film has an ability to speak personally and deeply to me, even if I'm not the target demographic.  I thought about that all the way through writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig's ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME MARGARET, which is based, in turn, on Judy Blume's seminal 1970 novel of the same name...

Posted May 9, 2023

PETER PAN & WENDY 

(PG)  1/2

Another Disney live action remake that refuses to grow up

The thought of watching yet another live action adaptation of Walt Disney's 1953 animated film PETER PAN had very little appeal to me.  Firstly, there have been so many relative kicks to the can, so to speak, in terms of redos of the property, whether it be in Steven Spielberg's HOOK or - more recently and horrendously - Joe Wright's completely wrongheaded PAN.  Secondly, I could devote an entire article about how little I care for the House of Mouse's continual milking their animated film catalogue in order to rebrand them in "new" live action properties...

Posted May 9, 2023

JESUS REVOLUTION

(PG-13) 

A soft pedaled and sanitized historical drama that won't convert many

I often go into faith-based movies with a mostly defensive-minded posture, essentially because (a) I'm definitely not the target demographic and (b) most films of this ilk usually aren't made to the highest qualitative standards.  Having said that, I don't have to be the target audience for any film to like and/or appreciate it, especially if it goes beyond my expectations for said material.  JESUS REVOLUTION appealed to me primarily as a student of history, seeing as it delves into an evangelical Christian movement that began on the West Coast of the U.S. in the late 60s and early 70s...

Posted May 9, 2023

RENFIELD (R) 

Cage: dead and loving it!

I'm quite positive that - for fans of Nicholas Cage's most gonzo performances - that the new horror-comedy RENFIELD had them with one simple proposition: Nic Cage...plays Count Dracula.  Consider me sold.  But...wait a tick...didn't the actor play a member of the undead before way, way back in 1988's extremely kooky, but deliriously entertaining VAMPIRE'S KISS?  Well, yes, but this time - several decades later - the Oscar-winner is playing the mother of all blood-suckers in Dracula himself...

Posted April 27, 2023

A romantic spy comedy best left ignored

Within the first three minutes of the new romantic spy comedy GHOSTED - an Apple Original Film -  one character is using Apple CarPlay and enjoying its hands-free features while commuting.  A minute-plus later and a different character is using Apple AirTags to find a missing item...via his iPhone.    This is the most Apple film that Apple has ever Appled.  Hyper aggressive and beyond obvious product placement in its early stages aside, there are an unending number of other problems with GHOSTED...

80 FOR BRADY (PG-13)  1/2

A sports comedy with laughs sacked out of it

I went into the new sports comedy 80 FOR BRADY with two competing mindsets.  First, I was like, wow, this film features a relative who's-who of legendary Hollywood actresses - Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and Sally Field.  The idea that they're all pooling their considerable talents together in a single movie for the first - and considering the stage of their respective careers, arguably the last - time is enticing, to say the least.  Secondly - and more distractingly - this film seems like one large piece of product placement for not only the NFL and New England Patriots, but also for its former multiple Super Bowl winning quarterback...

Posted April 27, 2023

AIR (R) 

Affleck shoots a nothing but net game winner

The new historical sports drama AIR - director Ben Affleck's fifth film and his first behind the camera since 2016's LIVE BY NIGHT - takes its name from the famous brand of Nike basketball shoes that were produced for Michael Jordan back in 1984.  Designed for the company by Peter Moore, Tinker Hatfield, and Bruce Kilgore, the first Air Jordans hit the market for consumers the following year, coming after Nike's courtship and signing of Jordan to a then unheard of five year, $2.5 million dollar marketing contract...

Posted April 20, 2023

OPERATION FORTUNE: 

RUSE DE GUERRE  (R) 1/2

Mission: Mostly Possible

The somewhat oddly titled OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE (yeah, it doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, does it?) represents the fifth collaboration between director Guy Ritchie and star Jason Statham, who previously worked together on the terribly underrated heist thriller WRATH OF MAN (that film, alongside the very decent THE GENTLEMEN, represented a solid return to form for Ritchie after wallowing in Disney live action remake waters like ALADDIN and the bloated and forgettable KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD)...

Posted April 20, 2023

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS:

HONOR AMONG THIEVES 

(PG-13) 

Rolling the dice and scoring decent damage

I'm old enough to remember playing DUNGEONS & DRAGONS when the Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created tabletop role playing game was still in its relative infancy back in the early 80s.  It's pretty amazing to see how the game has evolved and attracted new generations of players in its near fifty-year history.  One of its cornerstones (in its various forms) is players creating and controlling their own characters and their respective destinies, not to mention that individual campaigns were further built upon by squads using their imaginations and sense of teamwork to overcome any foe or obstacle thrown in their paths...

Posted April 20, 2023

Brick for brick, an entertaining piece of gaming history

I know people that would never profess to be a gamer or know anything much about the larger gaming industry, but these same people have undoubtedly heard of and/or played Tetris.  It's a puzzle game of stark and addictive simplicity, one that can easily be picked up and started by seemingly anyone of any age group.  Created by software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984, the game began from the humblest of beginnings before it took the larger world by storm...

M3GAN (PG-13)   1/2

A mostly bland facsimile in the killer doll horror genre

M3GAN (not a typo) is the latest in the horror-thriller sub-genre involving (a) an A.I. infused robot that becomes self-aware and homicidal towards its human overlords and (b) a killer doll that's befriended by a child, leading to all sorts of thorny consequences.  It comes from Blumhouse with a co-story credit from James Wan (co-creator of the SAW, INSIDIOUS and THE CONJURING franchises) and seems largely inspired by the CHILD'S PLAY films to a large and sometimes distracting degree...

Posted April 11, 2023

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4

(R)  1/2

Your descent into hell ends here, Mr. Wick

In my review of the last JOHN WICK back in 2019, I lovingly referred to it in the grand tradition of what the late Roger Ebert coined as a magnificent "Bruised Forearm Movie," or the kind of movie "where your date is always grabbing your forearm in a viselike grip, as unbearable excitement unfolds on the screen."  I thought that JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3: PARABELLUM was one of the greatest Bruised Forearm Movies ever made, with its previous two series installments being highly worthy of said moniker as well...

Posted April 6, 2023

MISSING (PG-13)  

Don't let your mom out of your sight

MISSING serves as a standalone sequel to 2018's SEARCHING (seen, but not reviewed by me), which concerned a desperate father looking for his lost daughter while employing everything from laptops, cell phones, surveillance footage, and so forth (I've heard the descriptors "desktop" and "screenlife" thriller being used when talking about this film).  The screenwriters of that film - Will Merrick and Nick Johnson - returned to not only write MISSING, but also work behind the camera this go around, making their collective feature film directorial debuts...

Posted April 6, 2023

SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS

(PG-13) 

An undisciplined sequel that's still strong in spirit, pure in heart

One of the main reasons why the first SHAZAM! movie worked so well was because it not only represented a welcome and refreshing tonal shift from the darker DCEU films that predicated it, but it also contained an infectious wish-fulfillment fantasy premise of a young teen being able to magically transform into an adult super hero with powers that would rival Superman (think BIG cross morphed with comic book fiction and you kind of get the idea)...

Posted March 28, 2023

65 (PG-13)

The Last of Us: The Cretaceous years

65 is a weird conundrum of a science fiction thriller.  It comes from the writer/director tandem of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (they previously and most famously co-wrote the ingenious A QUIET PLACE) and has a premise that's equal parts baffling and intriguing.  Moreover, they lay all of their cards down in terms of the screenplay's secrets early on (like...waaaaay early on) to the point where I was left wondering whether or not they could have been best left as a twisty reveal in the film's final passages...

Posted March 28, 2023

BOSTON STRANGLER (R) 1/2

On the trail of the Phantom Fiend

BOSTON STRANGLER is a new historical crime thriller that delves into one of the most frightening mass murder sprees in U.S. history and the saga of two female journalists trying to crack the case.  Of course, the film takes its name from the fact-based perpetrator of the killing of thirteen women in the Greater Boston area in the early 60s, who managed to use various nefarious means to get his victims to allow him into their respective homes...

Posted March 28, 2023

CREED III (PG-13)  

Creed 3, Rocky 0

For the first time in the CREED franchise, star Michael B. Jordan has taken a page out of Sylvester Stallone's playbook and has assumed the mantle of director, giving him a level of creative control not previously granted to him.  This seems like a logical career and series move, seeing as Stallone directed all but two of the ROCKY films that gave birth to CREED, so part of the excitement in seeing this third installment of the boxing exploits of Apollo's son is in witnessing what Jordan can do behind the camera and bring to the table here...

Posted March 18, 2023

MARLOWE (R)  

A private detective with a particular set of skills

So many talented actors have played Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled detective Phillip Marlowe throughout cinematic history that it becomes rather hard to keep track of them all.  The most noteworthy and famous of the lot would easily be Humphrey Bogart in 1946's THE BIG SLEEP, but let's also not forget about Elliott Gould in 1973's THE LONG GOODBYE or Robert Mitchum twice in 1978's FAREWELL MY LOVELY and 1978's THE BIG SLEEP...

Posted March 18, 2023

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: 

QUANTUMANIA (PG-13)

No franchise is too - ahem! - big to fail

The main problem with ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA is - paradoxically enough - that it's too overstuffed and...well...big for its own good and seems to forget what made the first film in the series such a refreshing and subversive delight. One of the reasons that I thought that 2015's ANT-MAN worked so well (and within the larger MCU) is that it was less concerned with slavishly continuing on massive franchise story arcs for AVENGERS films to come and instead honed in on telling an origin tale of a working class everyman hero and his small scale adventures...

Posted March 8, 2023

Neither a funny or scary haunted house flick

Part of me was looking forward to Netflix's new supernatural horror comedy WE HAVE A GHOST, mostly because it comes from writer/director Christopher Landon, who previously made the splendid time looping HAPPY DEATH DEATH, which he followed that up with the insanely silly, but insanely enjoyable sequel HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U.  His latest cross pollinated genre offering - based on the short story ERNEST by Geoff Manaugh - concerns a family that moves into a spooky looking house, discovers that a ghost is there, and then proceed to shoot footage of it and then posts it in on YouTube...

Posted March 8, 2023

WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD (R)

Not the saviors we're looking for

Very few of the characters that populate writer/director Jesse Eisenberg's coming of age dramedy WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD come off like real people.  His directorial debut seems filled with weirdly idiosyncratic personalities that - in their own unique way - are so off-putting and creepy in their behavior that I spent a majority of the film's 90 minute running time trying to figure out who these people were, what their purpose was in the story, and ultimately what Eisenberg was trying to say about them in the process...

Posted March 8, 2023

THE WHALE (R)

Requiem for a Herman Melville dream

I'll defend writer/director Darren Aronofsky by saying that he's the kind of button-pushing provocateur that can be commended for tackling subject matter and characters that arguably many other filmmakers wouldn't with a proverbial ten-foot pole.  I've always been of the decidedly love it, or leave it variety when it come to appreciating his work.  For every  masterful character study like BLACK SWAN or THE WRESTLER there have been problematic productions like his take on the Biblical story of NOAH or his too esoteric and odd for its own good MOTHER! and THE FOUNTAIN...

Posted March 8, 2023

Be careful who you steal from

There's a telling moment in the new thriller SHARPER that features one character informing another "If you're going to steal...steal a lot."  The film - playing now on Apple TV+ after a short theatrical engagement - tells a labyrinthine tale of a group of tightly connected people in The Big Apple royally screwing each other over - in one form or another - to gain control of one man's vast fortune.  It all sounds like pretty garden variety con artist fiction, not to mention that grifter stories of the have nots trying to rob the haves are as old as the genre...

You can never really go home again

Actor turned director Dave Franco first cut his teeth behind the camera with the fairly well oiled 2020 thriller THE RENTAL, and now for his sophomore effort he's opted for something completely different with the romcom SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW, which was co-written and stars his wife in Alison Brie.  Whereas Franco's rookie picture was as a chillfest, his latest goes the more broad and silly route in telling a tale of a career minded woman that has faced recent occupational hardships, so she returns home...

Posted February 24, 2022

I chose neither place

A constant sentiment that always pops up in defense of most romcoms is that an overtly predictable ending featuring the two lead characters finally coming together to express their mutual love for one another isn't a knock against the film; it's the whole journey with these characters towards such a happily-ever-after conclusion is what counts most.  That, and if you like these two people in question then that's half the battle as well, seeing as you want to root them on to everlasting romantic bliss...

Posted February 24, 2023

KNOCK AT THE CABIN (R)  

They're on a mission from Gawd!

I'm going to say something right from the get-go about KNOCK AT THE CABIN that I have not said about a M. Night Shyamalan film in over twenty years...wait for for...KNOCK AT THE CABIN is the first film from the director in a long, long, long time that has modestly evoked the finer elements of his career defining efforts of the late 90s and early 2000s. This represents a decent return to form for Shyamalan. Now, you're going to have to take that with a grain of salt, folks...

Posted February 15, 2023

ALICE, DARLING (R) 1/2 

Treading through dangerous waters

There's probably no better example in recent memory of a single actress elevating so-so material and uneven storytelling than Anna Kendrick in the new psychological thriller ALICE, DARLING.  If you're used to seeing her in more happy-go-lucky and bubbly roles (such as in the PITCH PERFECT series) then her new film should serve as an immediate wake-up call (and perhaps reminder) of the types of serious roles that she can be superb in when given the right chance (UP IN THE AIR comes immediately to mind).  In Mary Nighy's (daughter of Bill) feature film directorial debut she plays a traumatized woman that's involved in a deeply abusive relationship...

Posted February 15, 2023

This movie, man...

Netflix's YOU PEOPLE is a comedy of stunning and almost unfathomable awfulness that would have only been made better if my stream of it started buffering horribly from the onset and impeded my ability to make it all the way through to its end.  The film is also made all the more shameful because (a) it's trying to tackle some serious issues about modern day race relations in the most contrived and sitcom-worthy manner possible and (b) it contains some incredibly talented actors that have been proven to be funny in films before, but here wallow in one tone deaf and inexcusably hackneyed scene after another...

Posted February 9, 2023

Josh and Jenny packing heat and not much else

The new action/comedy SHOTGUN WEDDING has a premise that should have delivered on both action and comedy, but manages to mostly fail in both respects.  The film concerns a destination wedding on a private island in the Philippines that becomes overtaken by pirates that then take all of the guests hostage and try to ransom them for $45 million, with the bride and groom being forced to go into full-on John McClane mode and save everyone.  I mean, this should have worked...right...

Posted February 9, 2022

TAR (R)  

Blanchett: The masterful conductor of madness

I know so very little about the world of music conductors and composers, which is why I was frankly surprised to learn that writer/director Todd Field's TAR is not based on a true story.  Like...at all.  It's one of those rare breed of out-of-body pieces of escapism  that feels so lived-in and real that it must be based on a true story, right?  Miraculously, it's not.  Making a return to the director's chair after a long absence (his last film was his critically acclaimed 2006 effort LITTLE CHILDREN)...

PLANE (R)

Butler has fallen!

PLANE is one of the better films with an ultra bland title that I've seen in awhile.  I mean, you look at that word on the poster and it just doesn't scream out at you, does it?  But this action thriller does - sarcasm aside - boast a premise of simple economy: Gerald Butler plays a rugged and tough pilot whose plane crash lands on an island, leaving himself, the crew and passengers having to fend off blood thirsty militants that reside there...

KIDS VS ALIENS (R)

F*%K SPACE!!!

I really, really, really wanted to like this film.  Gosh, did I ever.  I mean, it's called KIDS VS. ALIENS!  That alone drums up so many juicy possibilities, doesn't it?  And it's from writer/director Jason Eisener, whom previously made his last feature film debut way, way back in the spectacularly trashy grindhouse effort HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN, which starred the late Rutger Hauer as the titular character that was (yes) a hobo that (also yes) wielded a shotgun. ..

AFTERSUN (R)

Through the sands of time

I've read that writer/director Charlotte Wells based AFTERSUN (her feature film debut) on a personal moment when she was casually looking at a family photo album and noticed a particular picture of her dad that struck her for how young he looked in it.  I know precisely how she felt. I was recently flipping through photos from my own high school graduation and was kind of blown away by the thought that my own father - posing right next to me during that time - was actually the same age that I am right now...

THE OLD WAY (R) 1/2 

A genre effort as old and dry as the hills

The new Western drama THE OLD WAY has a very apt title.  It's the kind of paint-by-numbers effort that utilizes just about every old and tired genre cliché imaginable and somehow tries to pawn itself off as something fresh and new.  That, and - holy crap! - this is the very first Western feature film release to star industry veteran Nicholas Cage, who has astoundingly enough (and over the course of his long 40-year career) never put on a cowboy hat and saddled up for one of these types of films...

Poe and the dark night detective

It's kind of astounding how this latest cinematic marriage between writer/director Scott Cooper and star Christian Bale - who previously teamed up to make the very good OUT OF THE FURNACE and the masterful HOSTILES - seems to by unceremoniously flying under everyone's radars and has been somewhat nonchalantly released on Netflix.  Their latest endeavor is the chilling murder mystery period thriller THE PALE BLUE EYE (based on Louis Bayard's 2003 novel of the same name) and it contains a deeply tantalizing premise...

Posted January 21, 2023

BABYLON (R)

The hardcore Roaring Twenties

I can't think of another film in recent memory that comes out audaciously swinging for the fences the way that Damien Chazelle's BABYLON does, which careens down its significant three-hour-plus running time like a beguiling and endlessly energized fever dream that doesn't seem to let up.  Chazelle made a name for himself with his rookie debut effort in WHIPLASH and then later followed that up with his Oscar winning musical LA LA LAND (which netted him a very deserving Academy Award for Best Director, the youngest to ever win).  Then came his masterfully helmed FIRST MAN...

THE MENU (R) 1/2

A full course meal of hilarity and depravity

I love it when films eviscerate their targets with a reckless abandon, and that's precisely what director Mark Mylod's THE MENU does to such darkly delicious effect.  The film - his first in over a decade - has its crosshairs honed in on multiple targets, most specifically the disgustingly rich elite, the pompous critic (hey now!), social media celebrities, the obsessive meticulousness of the gourmet food world, and the equally fanatical foodies that prop up master chefs to an unhealthy pillar of hero worship...

Don't look up!

Even though that I have not read it myself, there has been ample discussion over the years about Don DeLillo's 1985 absurdist novel WHITE NOISE being completely unfilmable.  After watching writer/director Noah Baumbach's committed, but ultimately meandering and unwieldy Netflix produced film adaptation I can easily see why.  The source material is certainly ambitious in its tone and scope, and appropriating such work for silver screen consumption is - no doubt - an unenviable and commendable task in its own right...

Posted January 14, 2023

Oh fiddlesticks...another murder

There's a moment deep into GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY when writer/director Rian Johnson engages in multiple levels of devilish misdirection.  And it's pretty ingenious in the manner that it radically changes the perspective that audiences have for not only the murder suspects (this is, after all, a murder mystery), but also for the sleuth himself in Benoit Blanc, played once again with unbridled enthusiasm and a mischievous edge by Daniel Craig...

Posted January 4, 2023