Movie Reviews

Dayveon tells the story of Dayveon (Devin Blackmon), a 13-year-old boy who, after the death of his brother, joins a gang in Little Rock, Arkansas and learns about the brotherhood and violence of gang life. One of the best things about coming to Sundance is seeing movies that expose me to different parts of life.  Whether it takes me to another country, or shows me inner workings of other cities across the U.S., Sundance always broadens…

Landline is director Gillian Robespierre follow-up to her 2014 sleeper hit, Obvious Child, a film that I absolutely loved and one that put star Jenny Slate on the must-watch list.  You can tell both Robespierre and Slate have both grown as artists in the last couple years, as Landline is a bigger, cleaner, breezy, wonderfully acted family comedy. Landline looks at the flaws and insecurities of one family in the mid-90’s.  Dana (Jenny Slate) is recently engaged…

City of Ghosts is one of the most horrifying and shocking documentaries you will ever see.  Director Matthew Heineman gives us an in-depth look at a group of journalists in Raqqa who use guerilla news reporting to show how ISIS is torturing and ruining Raqqa. The extraordinary lengths these reporters go through is unbelievable.  The reporters, who run a protest/news group called Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, has a role and every person is in…

The Incredible Jessica James should really be titled The Incredible Jessica Williams, because that woman is a star.  Williams, who stars as our titular character, is most known for her work on The Daily Show (2012) and supporting roles in films like Delivery Man (2013) and People, Places, Thing (2015).  But here, in her first starring film role, she is a revelation, in a romantic comedy that is endearing and hilarious. Jessica James (Williams) is an aspiring playwright in…

Icarus is one of those stories that if I didn’t see it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it to be true.  This is one of the wildest documentaries I have ever seen.  It starts off as a sports documentary documenting performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics and other sports and evolves into an espionage thriller, similar to that of a John le Carré novel. Icarus starts off as a look into P.E.D. use in sports….

To be honest, the only thing I knew about corals before going into Jeff Orlowski’s latest global warming documentary, Chasing Coral, was what I learned in Finding Nemo (2003).  As you can imagine, Finding Nemo did teach me much.  But, unlike the adorable animated movie, Orlowski’s film teaches you everything and anything about corals, from their anatomy to the unfortunate future of corals. Chasing Coral is a film about a group of divers, photographers, and scientists who set out to find…

After seeing Split, I am officially claiming that M. Night Shyamalan is back.  After starting off his career with a bang with The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (200), and Signs (2002), he then became the laughing stock of cinema by consistently making uninspired, awful films, like Lady in the Pool (2006), sorry, Water, Lady in the Water, The Last Airbender (2010), and After Earth (2013). But with Split, Shayamalan has made a movie like that of his first three. …

In The Bye Bye Man, the way to keep said Bye Bye Man away is to, “Don’t think it.  Don’t say it.”  And going into this movie, I was anticipating telling you, “don’t see it, either.”  But, much to my surprise, The Bye Bye Man is a pleasant, eerie surprise.  It is a smart, well-made, edge of your seat thriller that had me intrigued the entire time. When three college friends (Douglas Smith, Cressida Bonas, Lucien Laviscount)…

Peter Berg, you’ve done it again.  Patriots Day is Berg’s third feature in his trilogy of American tragedy and triumph, following Lone Survivor (2013) and Deepwater Horizon (2016), and it is his most accomplished work of the three and of the director’s career. This is a harrowing look at the bombings at the Boston Marathon in 2013.  It shows the horrific bombing and the intense manhunt that followed.  The film also looks how the bombing affected the city…

A movie like Monster Trucks is hard to review.  How do I go about judging this movie?  Do I judge it based on how I, as a 28 year old man, view the movie, even though the film is not for my demographic?  Or, do I judge it as if I am a six year old boy, the film’s target demographic?  I have this issue with kids movies all the time. I started watching the movie as…