Movie Reviews

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…

After seeing Underworld: Blood Wars, a quote from the movie Anchorman (2004) came to mind; “That’s not a good start, but keep going.” The 2017 movie year is off to a rough start, which is expected.  January is a dead month for cinema.  It is a time where studios release their worse movies on the docket.  Occasionally, we will get a gem or two, like The Grey (2012), but those are like gold hidden amongst a sea of…

2016’s biggest mystery has finally been revealed.  Throughout the year, it was uncertain when, or if, Martin Scorsese’s religious epic, Silence, was every going to hit theaters.  With no trailer or any buzz, it was looking like it was going to be one of my most anticipated titles of 2017.  Then, in November, we finally got a trailer and now, the final product, and I have to say, it was well worth the wait. Silence is true cinematic…