Here are my review of Strawberry Mansion, Mass, and A Glitch in the Matrix, which played at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.         STRAWBERRY MANSION   It seems like there is always somebody saying that films are not original anymore.  That movies are only franchises, remakes, or based on previous material.  These people would be wrong, and it is a movie like Strawberry Mansion that proves just how original films still are.  This is a colorful,…

Here are my reviews for How It Ends and On the Count of Three, which had their premieres at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.       HOW IT ENDS   How It Ends is one of the more unique end-of-the-world movies I have ever seen.  It’s a quirky, weird, often hilarious odyssey through Los Angeles filled with celebrity cameos and a sweet story. On the last day on Earth, Liza (Zoe Lister-Jones) goes on a journey through…

Here are my reviews for the films CODA, Flee, and Censor, which debuted at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.       CODA   The 2021 Sundance Film Festival kicked off in the best way possible.  Sian Heder’s CODA is an absolute delight of a movie.  A funny, sweet, beautiful family story with a huge heart and great performances. The film follows Rubi Rossi (Emilia Jones) a hearing child in a deaf family.  Because Rubi is the only in the…

      The Little Things is as basic as cop thrillers get.  The IMDb plot description is “two cops track down a serial killer” and that’s very accurate because that is really all that happens.  Though it tries to add layers to its characters and story, the film never reaches its full potential and instead ends up being a mildly captivating, overlong thriller with solid performances. In The Little Things, Joe “Deke” Deacon (Denzel…

        La Casa begins with a series of archival news footage looking at a haunted house in a town in Chile.  The footage gives us a history of the house and the family that lived there, who were trying to start a family and when they were unable to conceive a child, they resorted to black magic for help, though when the child was finally born it was born deformed.  This caused madness…

        Outside the Wire is a futuristic, militarized version of 2001’s Training Day.  A movie that looks at a rookie on the job who follows along his too-good-at-his-job leader while questioning some of his methods in getting the job done.  This is a movie we’ve all seen before, but the thrilling action and a captivating lead performance keep this one relatively interesting. Set in 2036, drone pilot Lieutenant Thomas Harpa (Damson Idris) is…