Review: Nightmare Alley

Review: Nightmare Alley

    Nightmare Alley marks director Guillermo del Toro’s first film following his Best Picture-winning The Shape of Water, a beautiful, twisted romance that looked at the love between a mute woman and an amphibian fish person. del Toro netted himself a Best Director Oscar along with Best Picture and the film also went on to win Best Original Score and Best Production Design, along with being nominated for a total of thirteen awards. I’m…

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Review: Licorice Pizza

Review: Licorice Pizza

    Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is a hang-out movie. It is a movie that rides the same vibe as movies like Dazed and Confused and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. A basically plotless odyssey through a time and place where things happen, but nothing super significant. This isn’t about what happens as much as it is about who it happens to. It is one of the very best movies of the year. It…

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Review: Don’t Look Up

Review: Don’t Look Up

    Following a comedic directorial run of Anchorman, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys, arguably the greatest comedy run by a director this century, director Adam McKay shifted his focus to more dramatic, political fare that has garnered him tons of awards and nominations. With 2015’s The Big Short, McKay went after big banks and the 2008 recession in a film that garnered five Academy Award nominations,…

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Review: The Matrix Resurrections

Review: The Matrix Resurrections

    The Matrix Resurrections marks our return to the Matrix in nearly two decades. The last time we entered the Matrix, we saw Neo (Keanu Reeves) defeat Mr. Smith (Hugo Weaving) and sacrifice his life to reboot the Matrix and save the city of Zion. It appeared that the story of Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, and the journey to save Zion and defeat Mr. Smith had come to a perfect close. Never in my wildest…

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Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home

Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home

      Spider-Man: No Way Home is the cinematic event of the year. Thanks to internet speculation, leaks, and the trailer of the film, we know that Spider-Man (once again played by Tom Holland) is being visited by villains of movies past in Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Dr. Ock (Alfred Molina), and Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church) from Sam Raimi’s original trilogy and Lizard (Rhys Ifans) and Electro (Jamie Foxx) from Marc Webb’s Andrew Garfield-led…

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CIFF 2021 Review: The Power of the Dog

CIFF 2021 Review: The Power of the Dog

    Watching The Power of the Dog, the latest film from Oscar-winner Jane Campion, I was in complete awe of everything I was seeing. Campion, who hasn’t made a movie since 2009’s Bright Star, comes back from her twelve-year hiatus to make a detailed, layered, chilling western that is not only one of the best films of her career and one of the best films of 2021.  The Power of the Dog takes place…

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Review: Home Sweet Home Alone

Review: Home Sweet Home Alone

      As crazy as it is to believe, the Home Alone franchise has been around for over 30 years. The first Home Alone was released in 1990 and became the highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office that year. The second film, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, was another smash hit. But the subsequent sequels, 1997’s Home Alone 3, 2002’s Home Along 4: Taking Back the House, and 2012’s Home Alone:…

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CIFF 2021 Review: Spencer

CIFF 2021 Review: Spencer

    Pablo Larraín’s Spencer is not a typical biopic of Princess Diana. This is not a movie that starts at Diana’s childhood and ends at her death, showing the highs and lows of her life. This film doesn’t care about that. The opening title card of the film reads “A fable from a true story” letting us know that this isn’t a film based on a true event but isn’t fully made up either….

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CIFF 2021 Review: The French Dispatch

CIFF 2021 Review: The French Dispatch

      There is no director like Wes Anderson. Nobody has his visual style, his tone, or his dialog. Nobody frames a shot like Anderson does or gets the performances from his actors as Anderson does. Watching an Anderson movie is watching something wholly unique from any other movie that is currently being made, like watching a film from Quentin Tarantino or a film from Pedro Almodovar. Seeing a Wes Anderson movie once is…

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Review: The Last Duel

Review: The Last Duel

      Ridley Scott’s latest film, The Last Duel, takes the Rashomon approach in telling its story. It is a movie that revolves around one event but from three different perspectives. The event at hand is the rape of Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer) at the hands of Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), a friend of Marguerite’s husband, Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), who challenges Jacques to a duel once he finds out what…

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