Movie Reviews

    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,…

    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…

      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…

    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…

      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:…

    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….

      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…

      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…

    “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” So utters Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part III. Michael says this line after he finds out that he has been double-crossed and is forced back into the mafia lifestyle he has tried to leave after a lifetime of crime that has filled him with regret. This quote kept running through my head while I was…