Movie Reviews

  The Hill is a run-of-the-mill inspirational baseball movie about how one man beat the odds to make it to the pros with the help of the people around him, hard work, and determination. The film was co-written by Angelo Pizzo, a screenwriter who has made a living off writing inspirational sports films. He has written such films as Hoosiers and Rudy, along with a few other inspirational sports films, all focusing on underdogs who…

Oppenheimer is a biopic as only Christopher Nolan could make. It features a plot with multiple timelines and multiple perspectives. It is filmed on a scale that no other director is capable of working on. It is a technical marvel and features possibly the best ensemble cast in 2023. It is a towering achievement and one of the best movies of the year. J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) was one of the most brilliant minds…

  Theater Camp is a film that has heart, humor, and not much else. This is a paper-thin mockumentary that despite having several interesting characters, can’t decide which character or story to focus on. Theater Camp takes us to AdirondACTS, a theater camp in upstate New York. After its founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) falls into a coma, her clueless “crypto-bro” son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) is tasked with keeping the thespian paradise running. With the camp…

  The opening ten minutes or so of Great Gerwig’s Barbie are truly magical. Through the voiceover of Helen Mirren, Gerwig establishes that there are two worlds: there is the “Real World”, where real humans live, and Barbieland, a matriarchal utopia that is inhabited by several different variations of Barbie, like President Barbie, Doctor Barbie, and Lawyer Barbie, among other occupations. Their counterparts in Barbieland are all named Ken (and there is one named Allan,…

  The League is an informative and excellent documentary about the Negro League, the all Black baseball league that produced some of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game, like Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, and Satchel Paige. The film looks at how the League got started in the late 1800s, the struggles it faced, and the effect it had on Black America and its communities. When most people think about the Negro League…

  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…