Movie Reviews

  I have not had a more frustrating experience at the movies in 2022 than I had with Thor Love and Thunder, the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What made the film so frustrating was that it brought the MCU back to a place that it had not been in for what feels like forever but the film was made with such little passion and focus that it ended up not being a…

  The summer movie season is synonymous with big characters. Just this summer alone we got the likes of Doctor Strange, Maverick, Buzz Lightyear, and Elvis Presley on the big screen, characters whose popularity and stature can barely fit on screen. But possibly the best character of summer 2022 is someone we have never met before and someone who is far from a giant. His name is Marcel. He is a soft-spoken seashell with pink…

My reviews of Public African Toilet and Nothing Lasts Forever from the 2022 SXSW Film Festival.     PUBLIC AFRICAN TOILET Kofi Ofosu-Yeboah’s stunning directorial debut Public Toilet Africa (Amansa tiafi) is a crime film set in Ghana but is a crime film we rarely see nowadays. A mesmerizing, vibe-heavy, slow-burning film that is just as much about the crime at hand as it is about the place it is set and the people who live in it….

    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…