Movie Reviews

  Amy Adams gives one of the best performances of 2024 in Nightbitch, Marielle Heller’s uneven horror dramedy about the superpowers and stress of being a wife and mother. Adams stars Mother, a once-promising artist who puts her career on hold after she gets pregnant and becomes a stay-at-home wife and mother. Her husband (Scoot McNairy) has a job that sees him traveling throughout the week and only being home on the weekends. The stress…

  I enjoyed watching Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night. I found it funny, energetic, and overall entertaining. But something was missing for me as I left the theater, and I couldn’t put my finger on it right away. It then came to me that watching Saturday Night was like watching the finale of a TV show or mini-series where I hadn’t watched any of the previous episodes. I’m not the biggest TV watcher, but if I…

You are not prepared for The Substance. I could tell you everything that happens in this movie and it still would not prepare you for what happens in the film. It is an epic, fearless, gross, shocking film featuring two dynamic performances. It’s as visceral a filmgoing experience as I have had in 2024. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging celebrity whose star has diminished since she peaked in the 80s. After getting…

  Alien: Romulus was a conflicting watch. I love the Alien franchise. It is one of my all-time favorite franchises. The world Ridley Scott built, and the unique sequels have made it one of the greatest sci-fi franchises of all time. But Alien: Romulus is not a great Alien film. It’s a fine Alien film that had some cool moments but didn’t expand the world as much as it could have nor did anything original….

  James McAvoy gives a terrifying and brilliant performance in Speak No Evil, James Watkins’ American adaptation of Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 Danish thriller of the same name. Speak No Evil is almost beat for beat the same as the original until the film’s final act. Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben (Scoot McNairy) are an American couple on vacation with their daughter in Tuscany. They befriend a British family, Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi),…

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is one of the best times I have had at the movies in 2024. Director Tim Burton returns to a form we have not seen from him in over a decade to give us an entertaining, hilarious, and heartfelt film that features spectacular sets, costumes, performances, and practical effects. Picking up 36 years after the original film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice introduces us to adult Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), a paranormal hunter with a successful…

  The Merc with the Mouth and Wolverine have entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe in truly spectacular fashion. Deadpool & Wolverine is an awesome comic book movie. An action-packed blockbuster that is full of bullets, blood, humor, and even some heart. It will satisfy the cravings of the IP-obsessed who are looking for cameos and easter eggs as well as be an entertaining watch for those who like big summer movies with movie stars at…

  Twisters is a classic summer blockbuster. It’s a big, loud, silly, entertaining spectacle that features action, drama, comedy, and romantic tension. It features scenes that will have your jaw on the floor in amazement and scenes that will have your eyes rolling to the back of your head because of its corniness or stupidity. It’s the kind of summer blockbuster we don’t see much of anymore. Twisters opens with a harrowing sequence that finds…

  Director Ti West’s MaXXXine is the third and seemingly final installment of his X Trilogy (though he has hinted in being interested in a fourth film) and the film is entertaining, twisted, and violent, something we have come to expect from this series of movies. But it suffers from something a lot of third films suffer from in that it has an over-stuffed and rushed plot that takes away from what made the previous…

  Tuesday is a strange bird of a movie, literally and figuratively. I’ve seen several movies in my years about death and people learning to cope with it, but never one quite like this. Though it takes a bit to get going, Tuesday is a unique and emotionally harrowing film about a mother coming to terms with her daughter’s death. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Zora, whose daughter Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) is terminally ill. Zora can’t…