Movie Reviews

        Anybody who goes into Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark expecting a horrifying film-going experience that will keep you up for days on end has clearly never read the original 1981 book.  The book wasn’t made for adults.  It wasn’t an epic Stephen King novel that dealt with death, trauma, and gave you enough scares to haunt you everyday for the rest of your life.  Scary Stories to Tell in the…

        Dora the Explorer, Nickelodeon’s legendary children’s program, is a show that was well after my time, so I was relatively blind going into the live-action adaptation.  I knew she had a cousin named Diego, a monkey named Boots, the bad guy was named Swiper and he swiped, and that Dora would ask the screen questions to help its viewers learn.  I can’t imagine there is a lot of other things to…

        A “blank check” is a check that can be written for any amount of money.  Someone who receives a blank check is given a check with no specific amount, but has complete freedom to write however much they want on it.  In the film world, directors, actors, and producers can receive their own version of a blank check.  This could be because of a successful movie or a series of successful…

My review of Quentin Tarantino’s ninth feature film ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD.

      The opening credits for Lulu Wang’s The Farewell act as a sort of symbolism for one the film’s central theme.  There isn’t anything extravagant here, just simple, opening credit text.  But the text that Wang uses is both in Chinese and English.  The texts are incredibly different, showing how two cultures from opposite sides of the world see one specific thing totally different.  The Farewell is a film that looks at the difference in cultures,…

        Stuber is the dumb person’s version of Michael Mann’s Collateral.  It’s a movie about two men who are bad at their jobs who randomly meet to solve each other’s issues.  It’s incoherent, dumb, really messy and really violent.  It does have the saving grace of its two leads, though they aren’t served properly for how talented the two men are. L.A.P.D. officer Vic Manning (Dave Bautista) has been after Oka Tedjo (Iko…

        I went into Crawl with limited expectations.  All I wanted was some cheap jump scares and some gator mayhem and I got just that.  But Crawl is a horror movie that is focused on far more than just cheap scares and alligators.  This is a relentless, claustrophobic thriller that deals with family drama and believing in yourself. Crawl takes us to Florida as a Category 5 hurricane is about to hit.  Haley (Kaya…

        The opening sequence of Jon Favreau’s The Lion King, Disney’s latest reimagining of one of their animated classics, is a shot-for-shot recreation of the opening number from the original 1994 film.  We open to a rising sun and hear the loud, iconic opening to “Circle of Life” and see the animals all reacting.  This sequence is truly breathtaking and an incredible way to start the film.  The photo-realistic animals and the way…

      Leaving the theater after seeing Midsommar, you would have thought that I just went five rounds with Mike Tyson.  I was sweating, out of breath, and exhausted.  My head was spinning and my heart-rate was jacked.  Writer/director Ari Aster has created yet another incredible feature film.  It is a film that you cannot shake and one of the best movies of 2019. After a horrific event, Dani (Florence Pugh) is empty and…

        In Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) goes on a school trip with his classmates to Europe, a vacation Parked undoubtedly needed after going to space, disappearing into a cloud of dust, coming back to life, defeating a galaxy-threatening Thanos with dozens of other superheroes, watching his mentor and father-figure die, and trying readjust to a normal life after all of this.  Before Parker heads to Europe, Happy Hogan (Jon…