Movie Reviews

The Fate of the Furious is the eighth installment of the Fast and Furious franchise, which is an incredible feat.  Who would have thought a small budgeted, Point Break (1991) rehash about street racing would turn into one of the best action series ever put on film?  You would think at some point the series would run out of gas and turn in a bad movie.  But with The Fate of the Furious, the franchise is stronger than…

Going in Style is Ocean’s 11 for people in the AARP crowd.  It is an amusing, quirky, lighthearted film with a stellar cast that is incredibly predictable, yet mildly enjoyable. Desperate to pay the bills and come through for their loved ones, three lifelong pals, Joe (Michael Caine), Albert (Alan Arkin), and Willie (Morgan Freeman), risk it all by embarking on a daring bid to knock off the very bank that is taking their money. The dynamic trio of…

I never really got into anime.  I’ve dabbled in some Dragonball Z and seen some Hayao Miyazaki films, but that’s really it.  I’ve heard of the beloved titles, like Akira and Cowboy Bebop, but again, never watched them.  I heard about Ghost in the Shell and knew that it was one of the most beloved anime’s out there.  No anime had been adapted into a live-action American film since the debacle that was Dragonball: Evolution (2009), so this was quite a gamble…

I grew up watching the Power Rangers T.V. show and loving it.  Sure the show was incredibly cheesy and terribly acted, but it was fun and I was watching it when it roughly five years old, an age where I only knew select shapes, numbers, and colors, so obviously this show was going to be my thing with my limited intelligence. As I grew up, I stopped hearing of the Rangers.  I was aware that they continued…

From the studio brought us animated gems like Shrek (2001), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), and Trolls (2016), comes The Boss Baby, an entertaining, fun, ridiculous flick that will slap a smile on your kid’s face for an hour and a half and yours for about 45 minutes. Alec Baldwin voices Boss Baby, a suit-wearing, briefcase-carrying baby who works for Baby Corp, a place where infants with adult-like minds work to preserve infant love everywhere.  Boss Baby infiltrates the family…

There is nothing special about Life.  Everything that happens in this movie we have seen dozens of times before and done better each time.  Even with its stellar cast, nothing in this movie is exciting, original, or scary, causing the movie to do an overall dud. The movie is about a team of scientists aboard the International Space Station that discover a rapidly evolving life form, that caused extinction on Mars, and now threatens the crew…

The opening of CHiPs is a black screen with a warning on it that reads, “The California Highway Patrol does not promote this movie.  At all.”  Well, neither does this reviewer.  CHiPs has a few parts that made me chuckle, but overall is an immature, uneven, unfunny action comedy. When aN F.B.I. agent (Michael Peña) goes undercover in the California Highway Patrol, he is teamed with a reckless, clumsy rookie (Dax Shepard) and the two work…

The Belko Experiment is the definition of B-movie madness.  This is a movie that would have played perfectly at a midnight screening in a garbage theater on some sort of hallucinogenic drug.  It is a bloody, violent, insane movie with a simple plot, cliché characters and the right amount of cheesiness. The Belko Experiment takes place at Belko Industries, a government building set in middle of nowhere Columbia.  On a typical work day, the building…

Beauty and the Beast is the fifth live-action adaptation of a Disney animated classic following Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), and Pete’s Dragon (2016) (we don’t count 2010’s candy-colored Alice and Wonderland).  When it comes to these remakes, what exactly are we looking for?  Are we looking for a near shot-for-shot remake of the original animated film?  A reinvention of the classic story?  A little bit of both?  Cinderella was closer to the shot-for-shot version, as was The…

Kong: Skull Island is the fourth incarnation of the infamous giant ape, following the original classic from 1933, the 1976 version starring Jeff Bridges, and Peter Jackson’s 2005 version.  Those 1976 and 2005 versions are both remakes of the 1933 film, all being essentially the same movie with a few story changes and new technology for each film.  But in Kong: Skull Island, we get something that is both original, yet keeps the same spirit and similar…