Movie Reviews

Here are some brief reviews of some of the movies I have seen at the 2020 Chicago International Film Festival.           KUBRICK BY KUBRICK  Directed by Gregory Monro I am a big fan of documentaries about film, particularly ones about directors.  Hearing directors talk about their work or hearing others who worked with them talk about their experiences is always a good watch that I use as a learning experience.  Kubrick…

        Free Country is a top-notch police procedural.  It’s a cop drama that looks at two very different detectives as they work together to solve the disappearance of two girls in a small town.  They must deal with local townspeople and town happenings while learning to work with each other through their flaws and personal issues in order to solve what happened to these girls.  It’s quiet, brutal, and endlessly compelling. The film…

To consolidate workload with the amount of films I watched over the course of the 2020 Fantasia Festival, I have combined a couple reviews of films together in one post.       THE PAPER TIGERS   The Paper Tigers is a movie that looks at three former Kung Fu prodigies who have grown into washed-up, middle-aged men.  When their master is murdered, they go on an ill-advised mission to find out who killed him, but…

          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…