Movie Reviews

      After 2017’s It was a critical and financial success, Stephen King adaptations immediately became the hottest properties in all of Hollywood.  So rather than take a lesser-known property to remake, like Graveyard Shift, or a film that was poorly received upon its initial release, like Sleepwalkers or Dreamcatcher, the first film to follow the It-hype was Pet Sematary, a remake of the 1989 horror classic which, for this critic, is one of the most unsettling horror movies…

        Shazam is a comic book character I knew nothing about going into the film.  I never read comics as a kid, but before heading into a new superhero origin story, I usually have a basic understanding of our hero before I enter the theater.  I was completely clueless on Shazam, to the point where I wasn’t even aware he was initially called Captain Marvel until Marvel sued DC for the name…

        The stoner comedy is a genre of film that has slowly faded away.  There have been films that have been based around smoking weed, but none that really fall into what it really means to be a stoner comedy.  A movie where the weed isn’t so much a main character, but a weapon that our stoned out hero or heroes use in order to survive their personal quest, which can vary…

        Tim Burton makes movies about outcasts.  From Pee Wee Herman to Edward Scissorhands to Ed Wood to Sweeney Todd, Burton makes movies about people who stand out from the crowd because of their looks, personality, and their lifestyle.  So it’s no wonder why Burton would be drawn to Dumbo, Disney’s latest live-action remake of the classic tale about a big eared elephant who learns he can fly.  But what makes this version…

        Transit is a quiet thriller that will have you thinking about it long after the credits role.  This isn’t a thriller in the sense of Se7en or Sicario, where it is overly dark and shocking in its violent and subject matter.  No, this is a thriller that takes place during the bright, sunny days in France and looks at one man’s loneliness in the world. Transit looks at Georg (Franz Rogowski), a man who, after…

        As a mysterious family stands at the foot of the driveway of the Wilson’s summer home, Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke), the father of the family, stands near the front door yelling for them to leave to no avail.  He then goes inside and grabs a metal baseball bat and starts pounding the bat in the palm of his hand yelling, “If you wanna get crazy, we can get crazy!” and boy,…

        The last time we saw the Avengers, half of them were turning into dust after Thanos snapped his fingers and eliminated half of all the living beings in the galaxy.  In one of the post-credit sequences following Avengers: Infinity War, we saw Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) watch chaos and pandemonium go down around him and he immediately orders the Code Red, and proceeds to take out a communication device and…

      Alita: Battle Angel is a movie that chooses style over substance, which isn’t always a bad thing.  I don’t mind a good piece of mindless entertainment.  I love the Fast and Furious franchise, I love a good amount of Michael Bay films, and the Marvel movies don’t exactly get the mental-wheels turning, but they’re awesome.  Why do I love these films so much?  They’re fun!  They are a blast of entertainment, filled with glorious…

      Glass is the final chapter in the unexpected superhero trilogy from M. Night Shyamalan, following 2001’s Unbreakable and 2017’s Split.  The fact that this trilogy exists is one of cinema’s great surprises, as nobody expected Split to be part of the Unbreakable universe.  With Unbreakable focusing on the rise of our protagonist, David Dunn (Bruce Willis), and Split focusing on the birth of our villain, The Horde (James McAvoy), the two are now pitted against each other thanks to Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson).  The…