Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
Avada Kedavra Beasts Franchise!
Grindewald runs for public office, the Dumbledore family tree expands, and Magizoologist Newt Scamander dances with dungeon scorpions in the absolutely pointless, painfully-dull, franchise-killing Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Series mainstay Katherine Waterston had the good sense to sit this one out and I wish I had as well. Read More
Everything Everywhere All At Once truly is the multiverse of madness that we deserve. Hilarious, utterly singular, and weirdly profound, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheiner (aka “The Daniels”) have cooked up something wholly original with their martial-arts multiversal science-fiction story about a Chinese family that owns a laundry mat. A genius-level explosion of creativity that blends Wuxia sci-fi with the vast endlessness that is literally the spectrum of onscreen possibility, there’s is a film that borders on the insane and is never anything less than wowing. To say I had a smile plastered on my face the entire time would be to overlook that fact that everyone around me did as well. Read More
A black hole of charm, Sony’s Uncharted is the opposite of inspired. Everything about this lazy, expensive, haphazard adaptation of the popular Playstation exclusive reeks of assembly-line blockbuster manufacturing. For a wannabe franchise-launching starting block, one that clocks in with an aggressive $120 million dollar budget, Uncharted feels little more than a hack pastiche of adventure movie tropes, airlifted in from better treasure hunter films and spackled with a coat of snide Mark Wahlberg one-liners. It’s painful by virtue of just how adamantly risk-averse and paint-by-numbers just about everything on screen ends up being. Read More
Death on the Nile begins with the origin story of Hercule Poirot’s (Kenneth Branagh) ridiculous mustache. His face was half-blown off in WWI you see, this facial deformity informing his older self’s reclusive and fussy nature. The overly coiffed, quadruple-pronged mustache was a cover up all along. A way to throw people off the scent of his great trauma and deep-seated pain. The detective, it seems, is indeed human after all. Surmising why the world-famous detective became who he is proves the best material in this sequel to 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, a murder mystery that is otherwise haunted by an almost total lack of mystery. Read More
The master of disaster is back to ruin the world again with Moonfall, a shamelessly bonkers sci-fi disaster movie where the moon is suddenly on a collision course with earth. A select few suspect aliens are involved. Following a string of disappointments, director Roland Emmerich’s latest is a bit of a return to form, or at least whatever form best suits Emmerich. Moonfall is an uncompromisingly ridiculous disaster epic where the scale is as massive as the plot-holes and the human element is consistently overshadowed by destruction special effects. It’s big, it’s loud, it’s dumb, and by the time the whole thing takes shape, it’s almost too much fun to deny its simple pleasures. Almost. Read More
It’s a remarkable feat that all these years later, MTV’s original confederacy of dunces still can withstand this level of pain. Jackass Forever, as directed by longtime ringmaster Jeff Tremaine, forgoes any suggestion of maturity and sticks with the simple premise of dick-punching, bone-shattering, concussion-friendly gags that these cackling hyena’s den of pranksters have long delivered for the juvenile, puerile, infantile amongst us. It’s just as recklessly funny as it’s always been. Read More
Following the death of her husband, photographer Chloe (Carla Juri) moves to Japan to try to start anew in blood. She’s welcome by their jovial old friend and traveling musician Toshi (Takashi Ueno) as well as the beguiling mysteries that every new city holds. As Chloe wanders the city streets and inviting countryside with her camera, she makes new acquaintances, including a man whose wife is battling cancer, a kind-hearted kindred spirit florist, and a dance choreographer. But none quite see her as fully as Toshi does. As a yearning and perhaps forbidden attraction takes root, the widowed Chloe must contend with allowing herself to feel romantically for someone again. Read More
On being, Descartes famously opined, “I think therefore I am.” Well, actually, he said, “Cogito, ergo sum,” but no one speaks Latin these days so you get the gist. After Yang, an existential science fiction movie from video essayist turned director Kogonada (Columbus), takes a step beyond the 17-century French philosopher to ponder what constitutes being in a world where humans and artificially-intelligent robots known as “technosapien” co-exist. Read More
A perfect way to officially launch the Sundance 2022, Emergency reimagines the Superbad formula through the lens of Blindspotting. Striking a well-oiled balance between drama and comedy, this riff on the “best friends on the verge of graduation” goes down some pretty harrowing rabbit holes, rarely pulling its punches as it explores prescient themes of racism, brotherhood, and Black excellence. Smartly-written, director Carey Williams’ killer debut explores black friendship and fraternity as straight-laced Kunle (Donald Watkins) and party animal Sean (RJ Cyler) prepare for a wild night of partying that goes off the rails in ways they never imagined. Read More
Scream is back. And with a new Ghostface (or two) comes a biting deconstruction of not just the long-standing slasher franchise, or the nature of “requels” (a term coined in this very film), or the horror genre in general, but the movie industry writ large. Many films of recent years have tried to capture the imagination of audiences by commentating on their own storied legacy – most recently with both The Matrix: Resurrections and Spider-Man: No Way Home – but none have done it with quite as sharp a wit or a curvaceous a blade as the most recent Scream. Tapping into the meta repartee that franchise architect Wes Craven approached the material with from the very get go, this fifth installment of the 90s-born slasher whodunnit is as razor-sharp and bloody glorious as ever. Most importantly, it’s just a hell of a lot of fun. Read More