Movie Reviews

A Cure for Wellness is one of the most original horror movies I have see in a long, long time.  This is an incredibly ambitious and ballsy film that really pushes the psychological thriller genre to another level, though not without its flaws. A Cure for Wellness is about an ambitious young executive named Lockhart (Dane DeHaan), who is sent to retrieve his company’s CEO from an idyllic but mysterious “wellness center” at a remote…

Much like The LEGO Movie (2014), everything in The LEGO Batman Movie is awesome.  This is easily the best Batman movie since The Dark Knight (2008), and this is a true Batman movie.  It understands Batman lore, brings in classic characters, mocks or pays homage to past Batman films, and delivers in terms of story, comedy, and action. In The LEGO Batman Movie, The Joker (Zach Galifianakis) and all the legendary villains of Gotham, like The Riddler, Bane, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and…

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” – Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III (1990) John Wick: Chapter 2 picks up exactly where John Wick (2014) last ended.  Our titular assassin (Keanu Reeves) is finishing the final touches on destroying the Russian family who killed his dog and stole his car.  Wick got revenge on the men who killed his dog, and now, he needs his car, and boy does he get it.  Dozens…

Right from the opening scene I knew Rings was going to be bad.  It is a scene filled with horrible acting, terrible exposition, and no scares.  It was similar sipping on a terribly made drink.  The first sip is awful, yet you continue to power through it until it was over, even though it never got better. Why this movie was made is beyond me.  The original Ring, made back in 2002, was a pleasant surprise.  It…

78/52 is an hour and a half film class.  This is an in-depth look at the infamous ‘Shower Scene’ from the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece Psycho (1960).  The film interviews dozens of people and looks at cinema before Psycho came out, Alfred Hitchcock’s filmmaking style, and a thorough breakdown of the iconic scene and what it, and the movie, meant for cinema. Psycho is one of my favorite movies ever.  It is one of the most expertly crafted and…

The Discovery may be the discovery of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.  With an intelligent script, excellent acting, and unique story, this is a science fiction love story you don’t want to miss. In a not-so distant future, Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) has discovered that an afterlife does exist, which causes millions of suicides across the world.  His son, Will (Jason Segel), goes to visit his father and convince him to shut down his research, all…

A Ghost Story is the definition of eerie.  This is an unsettling, creepy, challenging movie about life after death. On the surface, A Ghost Story is about a ghost who haunts a house and all of it its occupants.  However, this is a complex, mediative piece about life after death.  The ghost in the movie casually watches over every occupant of the house, from a widow, to a family, to a business.  Director David Lowery lets…

The Yellow Birds is one of the most frustrating movies I have seen at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  Not because it is challenging or because it is confusing.  It is because it is a great film until the final half hour in which it plays out like a boxer who is consistent in hitting their punches and then goes for knock out and whiffs, badly, allowing the opposing boxer hit back and knock out the boxer….

Patti Cake$ is Hustle ‘n’ Flow (2005) with a sprinkle of 8 Mile (2002) and a lot of New Jersey.  This is a dirty, base-shaking, crowd-pleasing, hip-hop heavy dramedy about keeping a dream when on the grind. Patricia Dombrowski (Danielle Macdonald), a.k.a Killa P, a.k.a. Patti Cake$ is an aspiring rapper fighting through a world of strip malls and strip clubs on a quest to make it big in the rap game. This is a movie about the grind.  Patricia…

Wind River is as cold as its setting.  Taking place in the frigid mountains of Vermont, where it is negative degrees in spring time, this is a place where everything hurts and blood stains the angel white snow. Writer/director Taylor Sheridan, the writer behind such films as Sicario (2015) and Hell or High Water (2016), completes his, what has now been called, The New American Frontier Trilogy, with the same intensity and style as the the two films I just named….