Movie Reviews

  James McAvoy gives a terrifying and brilliant performance in Speak No Evil, James Watkins’ American adaptation of Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 Danish thriller of the same name. Speak No Evil is almost beat for beat the same as the original until the film’s final act. Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben (Scoot McNairy) are an American couple on vacation with their daughter in Tuscany. They befriend a British family, Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi),…

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is one of the best times I have had at the movies in 2024. Director Tim Burton returns to a form we have not seen from him in over a decade to give us an entertaining, hilarious, and heartfelt film that features spectacular sets, costumes, performances, and practical effects. Picking up 36 years after the original film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice introduces us to adult Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), a paranormal hunter with a successful…

  The Merc with the Mouth and Wolverine have entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe in truly spectacular fashion. Deadpool & Wolverine is an awesome comic book movie. An action-packed blockbuster that is full of bullets, blood, humor, and even some heart. It will satisfy the cravings of the IP-obsessed who are looking for cameos and easter eggs as well as be an entertaining watch for those who like big summer movies with movie stars at…

  Twisters is a classic summer blockbuster. It’s a big, loud, silly, entertaining spectacle that features action, drama, comedy, and romantic tension. It features scenes that will have your jaw on the floor in amazement and scenes that will have your eyes rolling to the back of your head because of its corniness or stupidity. It’s the kind of summer blockbuster we don’t see much of anymore. Twisters opens with a harrowing sequence that finds…

  Director Ti West’s MaXXXine is the third and seemingly final installment of his X Trilogy (though he has hinted in being interested in a fourth film) and the film is entertaining, twisted, and violent, something we have come to expect from this series of movies. But it suffers from something a lot of third films suffer from in that it has an over-stuffed and rushed plot that takes away from what made the previous…

  Tuesday is a strange bird of a movie, literally and figuratively. I’ve seen several movies in my years about death and people learning to cope with it, but never one quite like this. Though it takes a bit to get going, Tuesday is a unique and emotionally harrowing film about a mother coming to terms with her daughter’s death. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Zora, whose daughter Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) is terminally ill. Zora can’t…

  The Dead Don’t Hurt is Oscar-nominated actor Viggo Mortensen’s second directorial effort following 2020’s Falling and while it is an improvement from Falling, I still find myself struggling with Mortensen as a director. Though shot well with some good performances, The Dead Don’t Hurt never fully clicked for me and ended up being a film I found mostly boring despite some moments of greatness. The Dead Don’t Hurt is a western and love story…

  I saw What You Wish For at the Chicago Critics and to be honest, it was not one of my most anticipated movies of the festival. The film was barely on my radar as a movie coming out this year. The only reason I went to see it was because following the film was a screening of Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead on 35 mm (which was amazing) so I thought I’d give…

  The Watchers marks the directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan, the daughter of director M. Night Shyamalan. Since breaking out in 1999 with The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan has been one of the most polarizing directors over the last almost thirty years, so following in his footsteps is quite a task. But Ishana shows that she is a real-deal filmmaker with this well-made, eerie, flawed folk horror movie. The Watchers finds Mina (Dakota…