Movie Reviews

          Twelve years ago, writer/director Bryan Bertino made his debut with The Strangers.  The claustrophobic nightmare is one of the scariest movies I have seen in the last fifteen years and one of my favorite horror movies of the 2000’s.  It was an impressive debut film, yet Bertino’s follow-up films, Mockingbird and The Monster, failed to make a dent whatsoever.  In fact, I didn’t even know those films existed until I was looking up…

          Growing up, I was lucky enough to live right across the street from a Six Flags amusement park.  My family and I would get season passes every year and I basically grew up with Six Flags.  I grew up riding roller coasters and all the other rides in the park.  I grew up with the cheesy theatrics and food that tasted great when I was seven, but hasn’t aged very…

          Crazy Samurai Musashi looks at a battle of legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi (Tak Sakaguchi) as he takes on 588 soldiers and defeats every single one.  Director Yûji Shimomura made the decision to shoot this battle in one, 77-minute-long uncut take, a bold and ambitious decision, yet one that if executed right, could have been an incredible feat and made for a great film.  Unfortunately, it isn’t as incredible as it could…

          As an artist, you can never predict who your work is going affect.  You might have an intention of who your target audience might be or who you expect to like your work, but there is really no way of knowing who will connect with your work. For illustrator Matt Furie, one of his pieces connected with a group he never would have expected and a group he wanted nothing…

            Project Power is the latest Netflix original movie and it is a movie I would classify as a “start-and-stop” movie.  It is a movie that you can start watching, pause or stop the film whenever you want, and pick it back up again whenever you want and won’t miss a thing.  You can do this multiple times and take however long of a break you want and you’ll be able…

          Lake Michigan Monster is a delirious midnight madness movie.  A micro-budget horror comedy that is unlike any movie I have seen in 2020.  What starts off as a monster chase turns into a trippy journey I did not expect.  I laughed, I was startled, I was confused, and yet I could never look away. Lake Michigan Monster starts with a simple premise: Seafield (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) and his crew are on…

        The opening scene of actor Dave Franco’s directorial debut, The Rental, is very telling of the movie you are about to watch.  We open on Charlie (Dan Stevens) looking at a luxurious AirBnB in his office with Mina (Shelia Vand) hanging over his shoulder.  You can immediately tell there is a chemistry between Charlie and Mina as Charlie says, “this is just what I need right now” while Mina is ogling…

            Harold Ramis’ 1993 comedy masterpiece Groundhog Day is one of the few films that I can think of, if not the only film I can think of, that became a genre of its own.  The romantic comedy spawned a number of films and television shows about a person being stuck in a time loop where they relive the same day over and over again.  Films like 50 First Dates, The Edge…

        Natalie Erika James’ Relic plays like the younger sibling of Ari Aster’s 2018 masterpiece Hereditary.  On paper, this is a slow-burning horror film that pits our characters against a force beyond this world.  But at its core, it is a deeply moving family drama about a tragic family event.  Relic is one of the best horror movies of 2020. When elderly Edna (Robyn Neven) inexplicably vanishes, her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter Sam (Bella Heathcote)…

        It is safe to say that 2020 has been kind of a bummer in the cinematic world.  With Covid-19 closing down all movie theaters and delaying a lot of the hotly anticipated movies to later in the year or even next year, there hasn’t been to really look forward to.  Though we have gotten some gems throughout the year, the only movies that we have been able to view since March…