Movie Reviews

    Top Gun: Maverick is one of those rare sequels that surpasses its predecessor in every way imaginable. That isn’t a slight on Tony Scott’s 1986 high-flying bro-down that has since become a seminal piece of 80s cinema, it’s just that everything in Top Gun: Maverick is taken to new levels. The action is more dynamic and intense, the performances are better, the filmmaking is tighter, the themes are stronger, and the emotions are…

  There are a lot of arguments out there that Marvel and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a machine just churning out movies. That their movies are just a product of an assembly line and that they all look and feel the same. There are movies in this 28-movie, four-show cinematic universe that fit this, but it isn’t the case for all of them. My favorite movies in the MCU are the movies that have…

  The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, or Massive Talent as the advertisements now call it, and what I will be calling it throughout this review because The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is an obnoxiously long title, is a movie that wants to be a love letter to Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage. The Oscar-winning actor was at one time of the biggest movie stars in the world, starring in blockbuster box office hits and…

  The Northman is director Robert Egger’s version of Hamlet. The classic Shakesperian tale of a son getting revenge on his uncle who killed his father years earlier. We’ve seen this story numerous times, whether it was a direct adaptation of the Shakespeare play or with animated lions. But with Eggers behind the camera, The Northman is a thrilling experience and solidifies Eggers as one of the premier visual artists working today. The Northman starts…

    As of writing this review, it has been over a week since I saw Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s, a.k.a the Daniels, latest film Everything Everywhere All At Once. It has taken me a while to write this review because it is hard to put in the words what the Daniels have created. Everything Everywhere All At Once is one of the most original and awe-inspiring movies I’ve seen in years. It is…

  Richard Linklater has been making movies for over thirty years now and throughout his career, his movies have ranged in budget, genre, tone, and style, making remakes of 70s comedies to making a movie whose production took twelve years to complete. Despite working in different genres of varying budgets and filming lengths, Linklater has often made movies that look at male fantasies, specific times, and places in people’s lives and coming of age films…

    Legendary Oscar-winner Rita Moreno gives a performance unlike anything we’ve ever seen from her before in The Prank, director Maureen Bharoocha’s fun and twisted high school comedy thriller. Ben (Connor Kalopsis) is an over-achiever. Desperate to get into the college his late-father would have wanted him to go to, he tries to do everything to perfection. His best friend Tanner (Ramona Young) is the opposite and barely tries at all. Despite their opposite…

    Chuck (Patton Oswalt) isn’t winning any “Father of the Year” trophies any time soon. When we first meet him, he is on a walk with his young son Franklin. On this walk, Chuck and Franklin find an adorable puppy and Chuck asks Franklin if he wants to keep it, to which Franklin happily replies yes. A few seconds later, we see a sign for a lost dog, with a picture of the puppy…

    Matt Reeves’s The Batman is the best Batman movie since The Dark Knight and the best movie about Batman as a character. This isn’t a Batman movie that is focused on Batman as a city-saving superhero, but Batman as a tortured detective. It is a dark, intense, thrilling film-noir about a hero learning his place in a broken society. Since 1989, when Michael Keaton donned the cape and cowl in Tim Burton’s Batman,…

  Dunk or Die is an electrifying documentary about a man who dreamed of flying. Not literally flying, but flying on the hardwood floor of the basketball court to throw down creative and powerful dunks. From tough beginnings to international fame, director Nicolas de Virieu shows an inspiring profile of an impressive and motivated athlete that most people may never have heard of. That athlete is Kadour Ziani, an Algerian man who grew up in…