Movie Reviews

    Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is an experience unlike any I have ever had at the movies.  I am writing this review three days after seeing the movie and I still can’t fully grasp what I witnessed.  I can’t tell if Valerian is a groundbreaking masterpiece, a campy classic, or a complete disaster. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is set in the 28th century and follows Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline…

    Christopher Nolan has done it again.  The director who has brought us modern classics in Memento (2001), The Dark Knight (2008), and Inception (2010) has made yet another masterpiece in Dunkirk.  This is an incredibly intense, thoroughly engrossing war film and the best movie of 2017 so far. Dunkirk takes a look at the invasion of Dunkirk during World War II, where the German army has surrounded Allied troops in the French city.  Nolan breaks this down into three parts;…

The final chapter in the Planet of the Apes prequel trilogy is a perfect ending to one of cinema’s greatest trilogies.  War for the Planet of the Apes ranks with Return of the Jedi (1983) and Toy Story 3 (2010) as the greatest finale to a trilogy I have ever seen.  This is a bold, epic, beautifully shot movie and one of the best movies of 2017. War takes place two years after the events of Dawn of the…

    Wish Upon is about a teenage girl named Clare (Joey King) who receives an ancient box that will magically grant her seven wishes.  However, with each wish, somebody close to her dies, which causes Clare into a downward spiral or paranoia, greed, and stupidity. I am not going to break this movie down like I usually do in my reviews.  Instead, I am going list seven wishes that I wish for this movie.  These…

        Spider-Man: Homecoming is a testament to Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios.  Over the last fifteen years, when Sam Raimi debuted his original Spider-Man (2002), we have seen five Spider-Man films, which included one trilogy, one incomplete trilogy, and two different Spider-Man’s (Spider-Men?) in Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. With Spider-Man: Homecoming, we get our third version of Spider-Man, with a new actor in the red and blue spandex, new villains, and a new story.  But, instead of…

    Gru and the minions are back in Despicable Me 3, a movie that if I were seven years old would probably land at the top spot of Best Movie of 2017.  But I’m not seven, I’m almost 30, and Despicable Me 3 is landing nowhere near the top of my Best of 2017 list. It isn’t going to land near the bottom either, however.  In fact, I genuinely enjoyed this movie for the most part….

    Will Ferrell is an actor who, for some reason, has a direct line to my funny bone.  Not my literal one, though, because that would be weird, but my metaphorical one.  I don’t know why he has this affect on me, but he does.  Even his more inferior movies make me laugh.  And once again, Farrell has succeeded in getting a slew of chuckles out of me in The House.  It isn’t one of…

      With Baby Driver, director Edgar Wright has created something only a true master of the craft could make.  This a movie that brings so many genres together, Quentin Tarantino would be jealous.  It’s a heist film, action film, car film, gangster film, musical, comedy, and love story, all rolled into one, two hour epic that keeps your heart pumping and your face smiling. After a run-in with crime boss Doc (Kevin Spacey) when…

    Salma Hayek may want to start prepping her Oscar speech because she is truly remarkable in Beatriz at Dinner.  This is a wonderful film about cultural differences that features two of the best performances of 2017. Beatriz (Hayek) is a holistic medicine practitioner and physical therapist.  While doing a house-call massage session for one of her closest and wealthiest clients, she is invited to stay for a dinner party after her car breaks down….

      Michael Bay is back to blow up our senses and ruin our childhoods in Transformers: The Last Knight, the fifth installment of the Transformers franchise.  This is an incredibly long, ridiculously loud, brain-numbing film that requires at least six Advil after the movie is finished. During past Transformers films, the headaches would be caused by the sheer amount of action, sound, special effects, and editing all jumbled into one wild, two and a half hour…