Movie Reviews

  Ghostlight was one of the first movies I saw at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and what a start to the festival it was. This is a charming, funny, deeply emotional story about a family coming together after a tragedy. Ghostlight takes place in Chicago and it is very much a Chicago movie. But it isn’t a Chicago movie like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that features Chicago landmarks like Navy Pier or the Sears…

  Regardless of the medium, the subject matter of The Color Purple is tough. Whether a book, a dramatized film, a musical on Broadway, or a film adaptation of that musical, it will always be a tough read or watch. The Color Purple looks at an African American teenager named Celine growing up in rural Georgia in the early 1900s and her tale of abuse, being continuously called ugly, teenage pregnancy, and growing up hoping…

  Poor Things is the most movie of 2023. The latest from director Yorgos Lanthimos features big-name actors doing A LOT of acting while reciting bizarre, quirky dialog, lavish and extravagant sets and costumes, and a nearly two-and-a-half-hour-long runtime. It’s a whole lot of a movie, but a tiresome one when all is said and done. Poor Things plays like a gonzo Frankenstein. Brilliant scientist Dr. Goodwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) finds the body of an aristocratic…

  The Iron Claw is a movie about the Von Erichs, a Texas family who became wrestling royalty throughout their time in professional wrestling in the 1980s. If this is the first you’ve ever heard of the Von Erichs, The Iron Claw will serve as an American sports tragedy. If you know who the Von Erichs are and know about their story, you’ll be rewarded with a gripping and tragic look at a cursed family…

  Maestro is Bradley Cooper’s second directorial effort following his 2018 Oscar-winning hit A Star is Born. Cooper choosing to modernize a classic story like A Star is Born was a bold choice because of how many movies we have seen with that story and how many times the movie itself had been made. But Cooper knocked it out of the park. It made a bunch of money at the box office, was critically acclaimed,…

  Kenneth Branagh returns as the world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot in A Haunting in Venice, the third and best film Branagh has directed based on the books of Agatha Christie. Set in post-World War II Italy, Hercule Poirot (Branagh), having lost faith in humanity and his passion for detection, has retired from detective work and living in exile. He is visited by Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), an old friend and mystery author, and she…

  Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, the 33rd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, comes on the heels of a scathing Variety article talking about how the MCU is in trouble. Their recent films and shows have been receiving poorer than usual reviews, their box office numbers are not booming to the level they are accustomed to, there are troubles off-screen, and they can’t seem to find their footing in a post-Endgame world. None of this…

  Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla marks the second film involving Elvis Presley to be released in the last eighteen months following Baz Luhrman’s Oscar-nominated film, Elvis. We’ve seen films with similar subjects be released at the same time before, like Deep Impact and Armageddon, Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, Capote and Infamous. Usually when films of similar topics are released around the same time, the two films are constantly compared to which one is better. But that…

  The opening credits to David Fincher’s The Killer prep you for everything the movie is about and everything the movie is about. The credits move at a fast and efficient pace, giving the viewer only seconds to see the names on screen. But they aren’t too fast. You can easily read each and every credit as if Fincher knew exactly how long it would take for the viewer to read and process the credits….

  Raging Grace is a relentlessly suspenseful horror story about the immigrant experience in London. Raging Grace takes place in a posh neighborhood in London. Undocumented Filipina Joy (Max Eignemann, in a tremendous performance) makes a living by being a maid of the upper class and sleeping in their homes while they are out of town with her rascally daughter Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla). When Joy gets a call for her latest job, it takes…