Nearly 30 years after the release of Jan de Bont’s natural disaster thriller and meteoric box office hit Twister, the winds of its legacy blow once more. Swept up in the industry’s recent trend of mining intellectual property from nearly every existing franchise over the last century, Twisters emerges as a largely cynical attempt to reignite box office flames in the natural disaster genre stratosphere. Though its tracking to do some major numbers across international territories looking for an all-ages summer hit, one is left with the sinking feeling that with all the assembled talent and massive budget, we could just do so much better than this. Bolstered by the emerging talent of rising stars in the form of director Lee Isaac Chung (Best Picture nominee Minari) and current Hollywood it-guy Glenn Powell, Twisters isn’t a disaster, but it won’t blow you away either. Read More
‘DUMB MONEY’ A Meme Movie With Moderate Returns
The premise of Dumb Money is simple: slap an ensemble of human faces on the viral Game Stop stock story and run the highlight reel. The star-studded meme movie from director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Cruella) effectively transports us to a not-so-distant past: January 2021. The pandemic was still in full swing, masks were mandated, the term “essential worker” applied to nurses and DoorDash drivers alike, and people were looking for something to root for. Enter Keith Gill (Paul Dano), aka Roaring Kitty aka DeepFuckingValue (DFV), a low-level financial analyst and hobbyist YouTuber who dumps his $53,000 life savings into GameStop positions and decides to tell the internet why. In turn, Gill starts a movement of retail traders who follow suit, looking to enrich themselves but also – and equally importantly – take down the proverbial man. Read More
‘TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEAST’ is Just Another Tired Entry in a Robotic Saga
1994 – a year when hip hop was flourishing, the Internet was a nascent wonder, and the Autobots were still saving the Earth – or something to that effect. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, the seventh installment in the live-action Transformers series, leaps back to this era for yet another round of robot-on-robot rumblings. However, unlike the cool nostalgia of the 90s, the film is a profoundly uninteresting amalgamation of brain-deadening franchise IP and connective brand synergy. Read More
Lively, Diverse ‘IN THE HEIGHTS’ The Best Broadway Musical Adaptation In Years
Generally, I’m not the world’s biggest musical fan. I’ll admit it: I often think them overlong, shallow in terms of character development and depth, and find the musical theater standards tend to be mainly forgettable, with a few catchy showstoppers mixed in for good measure. In The Heights, the best straight Broadway stage adaptation in quite some time, falls pray to these shortcomings while managing to remain a highly-engaging, uber-flashy toe-tapper that celebrates the cultural diversity of one of New York City’s last gentrification holdouts. As far as stage-to-screen musicals go, there’s not all that much to complain about.