Movie Reviews

  Much of the advertising for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has been centered around the film’s centerpiece action scene, which finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, doing the stunt himself, as we’ve come to expect) driving a motorcycle off of a cliff and opening a parachute on the way down. The advertisers at Paramount were right to focus on that scene because it lives up to the anticipation. It is a breathtaking sequence…

  Writer/director Wes Anderson’s newest film, Asteroid City, finds the director firing on all cylinders in a movie that defines what a Wes Anderson movie is: visually stunning, immaculately constructed, a stellar ensemble cast, funny and bright with layers of sadness to it. The film opens in a black-and-white, nearly squared frame with a Twilight Zone-like Host (Bryan Cranston) explaining that we are about to watch a television program about the making of a play…

  Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fifth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise that first kicked off over forty years ago with Raiders of the Lost Arc. Though it is missing some of the magic and technical mastery of the previous Indiana Jones films, this is a rousing and entertaining send-off to one of cinema’s greatest heroes. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny takes place in 1969 shortly after the…

  Following his films Phoenix, Transit, and Undine, director Christian Petzold has become one of my favorite filmmakers working today. His films are masterfully made, and he always gets great performances from his actors. His latest film, Afire, continues Petzold’s trend of great movies. But unlike his previous films which took us back to the World War II era or dealt with fantastical romances, Afire is a movie set in the real world that looks…

  The Unknown Country is an outstanding movie that blurs the line between fiction and reality. Inspired by the likes of Wim Wenders and Agnes Varda, director Morrisa Maltz crafted an emotional and arresting journey through Midwest and Western America. In the film, Tana (Lily Gladstone), drives from Minnesota to Dallas searching for some catharsis following the death of her grandmother. She makes various stops, from gas stations to motels to an Indian Reservation her…

  Growing up, it felt like everyone knew someone who had a BlackBerry, the iconic smartphone with a keyboard that produced that infectious clicking sound. I know my father had one and still talks to this day about how much he loved it. BlackBerry phones dominated the cell phone market for years in the early 2000s. But now, they don’t even sniff the surface of relevancy in the cell phone market. How did the most…

  Andy Muschietti’s The Flash is a bad film. A soulless, ugly, dumb film that perfectly symbolizes everything that is wrong and has been wrong with the films of the DC Extended Universe. It is a movie that only exists for fanboys and Twitter.  Everything that happens in The Flash feels like a series of random events, characters, and plots that were thrown together in an attempt to make a movie. It follows Barry Allen/The…

  Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a revolutionary film. It is a film that pushes the boundaries of animation on film. A film that questions the conventions of superhero movies and their genre tropes. A comic book movie sequel that is as big, bold, and ambitious as any we have ever seen. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, is a phenomenal comic book movie sequel. Like other great comic book movie sequels like Spider-Man 2 and The Dark…

  One of the talking points around the Fast & Furious franchise is how unrealistic and insane the movies have gotten. What started as a street-level franchise about cops, criminals, and car racing progressively became globe-trotting espionage spectacles filled with action, cars, and dozens of characters played by big-time actors. With the movies getting bigger, both in popularity and in budget and effects, the plots kept getting more complicated and the stories more ridiculous to…

  The opening credits of the first Guardians of the Galaxy saw Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) landing on a planet, entering a cave, putting on the headphones to his old Walkman cassette player, and playing “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone as he dances and struts through the cave. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the film’s opening credits are of Baby Groot dancing to “Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra while…