Movie Reviews

          The first time I saw Anton Yelchin on screen was in 2007’s Alpha Dog.  In an ensemble of with a number of young, up-and-coming talent like Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, and Amanda Seyfried, Yelchin was one of the true standouts of the film, giving an honest performance that would immediately put him on my radar.  Watching Yelchin grow as an actor was a true treat.  He was an actor who did…

        Angel Has Fallen, the third installment of the Gerard Butler-led Has Fallen trilogy, following Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen, is a film I would refer to as a “Lazy Sunday Dad Movie”. Imagine your dad comes home from shooting a mediocre round of eighteen in the morning.  He plops himself down on the couch with a sandwich and a cold beverage.  He turns on the T.V. and begins to scroll the channels, not…

      “Fuckin’ rich people.”   Ready or Not is an absolute blast.  A film that looks at what is supposed to be the happiest day in ones life that actually turns into a nightmarish hell.  It’s a creepy, exciting, bloody good time with tons of humor, a great ensemble, and an absolutely insane finale. Grace (Samara Weaving), a girl who came from nothing and grew up in foster homes, is getting married to…

      Sixth grade is a weird time.  You’re out of elementary school, you’re almost in high school, and you begin to notice things.  You begin to notice girls.  You begin to realize what you like, which makes you realize who your true friends are.  Good Boys shows us just how weird this time in life, giving us a wild, rambunctious, hilarious journey of three sixth graders. Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams),…

          There are some movies that would have been better off as a mini-series on HBO of FX.  Movies like Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines and Lee Daniels’ The Butler are two that come to mind.  Two movies that are very good, but have such rich, deep stories and characters that is impossible to flesh all of it into a two or two and a half hour long movie.  These stories would have…

        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,…