Movie Reviews

  Throughout director Darren Aronofsky’s career, he’s established himself as a director who handles heavy subjects with a visceral vision. Movies like Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, mother!, and The Whale deal with hard subjects like addiction and loneliness, and Aronofsky has never held back from the harshness of these subjects. His movies, to this point, have been well-made, but intense and at times shocking. Aronofsky’s newest film, Caught Stealing, is far and away…

  2021’s Nobody was one of the biggest surprises of that year. In a post-pandemic cinematic experience, seeing funny-man Bob Odenkirk turn into John Wick for 90 minutes was more fun and entertaining than I ever expected. Nobody 2 fails to conjure up the same spark that the first film did. It does feature bone-cracking action and a slew of dead bodies, but the magic of seeing Odenkirk become a super assassin has vanished, despite…

  Reviewing a remake is always tough. As much as we try to watch the film for what is present on the screen, it’s hard not to think about the original source material, similar to watching a movie based on a book you’ve read. We expect how the plot will unfold, we already know the basis of the characters, and we are aware of any twists that may take place. Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest,…

  We’ve all heard the saying, “two is plenty, three’s a crowd,” at some point in our lives. While it’s self-explanatory, the saying means that two people can enjoy each other’s company comfortably, but adding a third person can create awkwardness or tension. Watching Tim Story’s The Pickup, that old proverb kept running through my head. The film stars Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson as two armored truck drivers whose truck is the target of…

  Weapons has an incredible hook: one night, at 2:17 am, 17 kids from the same class woke up, ran out of their houses, and seemingly disappeared into the night. Nobody knows where they went, nobody knows why they ran out of the house, and nobody can find them. It’s hard not to be hooked by such a simple yet chilling premise for a film. But with that comes the pressure of executing a story…

  After leaving my screening for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the 37th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and processing my thoughts on the film, the subtitle First Steps kept circling in my brain. With this being the first time we have seen the Fantastic Four in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the film very easily could have just been titled Fantastic Four, much like how almost every other superhero’s first film is just titled…

  Is it too soon to make a COVID-19 movie? While the virus that overtook the world back in 2020 has been featured in a few films over the last five years, whether directly like in Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi or Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which found our characters working from home, isolating, and wearing masks, or allegorically like in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, where the characters are quarantined after coming into…

  Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh entry in the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World franchise, is almost a great film. Following Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film, the franchise hasn’t come close to sniffing the quality of that masterpiece, with each entry seemingly getting worse. With Jurassic World Rebirth, it starts with a great idea and interesting characters. It even features moments that reminded me of Spielberg’s first film, which makes the “almost” even more heartbreaking. Jurassic World Rebirth…

  James Gunn’s Superman is an important movie. Not only is Gunn rebooting the iconic superhero for the fourth time, but he has also been appointed to launch a new DC cinematic universe, following the failed attempt in the 2010s by Zack Snyder. Starting with Superman to kick off a cinematic universe of this magnitude is a good idea. The Man of Steel is arguably the most famous superhero and has been for decades. Everyone…

  F1® The Movie establishes its personality right from the opening scene. Taking place at the 24 Hours at Daytona, an endurance race where race teams race for 24 hours, we are introduced to Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), who is preparing to take over the driving from his teammate. When Hayes gets behind the wheel, we immediately learn how great a driver he is. He’s aggressive and smart, seamlessly moving past other drivers. Director Joseph…