Movie Reviews

        While watching The Strangers: Prey at Night, a woman behind me kept jumping and gasping at nearly every scene and at one point said to the person next to her, “I don’t want to watch this movie anymore.”  This essentially summarizes the feelings I had while watching the movie.  Only I wasn’t scared, I was bored and annoyed. In this sequel that nobody asked for, a dysfunctional family spends the night in…

      Red Sparrow is a classic spy movie.  It is a slow burning, twisty movie about government secrets, secret agents, and double crossing.  This isn’t your Jason Bourne or your Ethan Hunt movies, this is a dirty, gritty movie that requires your to pay attention because you never know who is playing who. After a career-ending injury, a ballerina Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is recruited to ‘Sparrow School,’ a Russian intelligence service where…

      A game night will bring your favorite people together to eat, drink, and play a number of different games.  It is an activity that isn’t about the games at hand, but more about spending time with the friends you care about.  That is exactly what Game Night is.  It is a movie who’s central plot is fun, with a number of different genres and stories thrown in, but a film that focuses on the…

    Alex Garland’s directorial debut, Ex-Machina, is one of the best science fiction movies of this decade and an incredibly impressive directorial debut.  It is always hard to follow a masterpiece, as there is now a level of expectation that is usually hard to repeat, let alone twice in a row. With Annihilation, Garland shows he’s a real deal director, though fails to capture the originality, intensity, and brilliance of Ex-Machina.  The movie is a visual…

Black Panther is the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it is unlike any that they have come out with before.  Unlike most Marvel movies, this is a movie that is it’s own animal (pun?).  Director Ryan Coogler has made something truly special. In the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War, Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) is about to become the King of Wakanda while still doubling as the Black Panther.  His first act as king…

      Dakota Johnson and Dumbface, sorry, Jamie Dornan, are back for the third and final (THANK THE FUCKING LORD!!) film in the Fifty Shades series, Fifty Shades Freed, far and away the worst of the series and in the running for the worst movie of the decade. During the movie, my girlfriend, with whom I saw the movie with, asked me what time it was and I told her the movie had only been going on…

      The Cloverfield Paradox is the third installment in the Cloverfield trilogy, following the found footage monster flick from 2008 and the 2016 claustrophobic thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane. When hearing that there was going to be a third Cloverfield film, my intrigue was through the roof.  The first film is an insane monster movie that puts these alien creatures on Earth.  We don’t know how they got there or why they are there, which is all part of…

        Den of Thieves is a frustrating movie.  It is frustrating in that it is a movie about nothing.  There are a lot of characters and actions happening, but it all culminates into nothing.  What is crazy about that is that the run time is nearly two and a half hours and within that two and half hours, we get little character development, a small plot, limited action, and an ending that…

There is a scene in Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game where Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) is closing down one of her usual poker games in New York city.  A regular by the name of Douglas Downey (Chris O’Dowd), who usually stays after the game is over to drink and hang out, drunkenly stumbles over to Molly and plops down right next to her desk.  Molly knows what is coming, as Douglas is known for saying phrases that “sound…

    At the beginning of 2016, it looked like it was going to be a good year for Matt Damon.  Yes, he had The Great Wall early on, but in prime Oscar season, Damon was starring in two movies, Suburbicon and Downsizing.  Suburbicon was written by Oscar winners the Coen Brothers and directed by George Clooney, who is a Hollywood favorite.  Downsizing was written and directed by two time Oscar winner Alexander Payne.  It was looking like this was…