Category: Reviews of Movies
The Little Mermaid: Directed by Rob Marshall. With Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Melissa McCarthy, Javier Bardem. A young mermaid makes a deal with a sea witch to trade her beautiful voice for human legs so she can discover the world above water and impress a prince. This is likely the second best live action adaptation of a Disney film that I’ve seen yet, with Jungle Book still at the top because of how much I liked the new stuff they introduced to the film. Disney has gone both routes with these adaptions, with some of them introducing too much new...
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson. With Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Luna Lauren Velez. Miles Morales catapults across the Multiverse, where he encounters a team of Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence. When the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles must redefine what it means to be a hero. Should you see this film? Absolutely. it’s as good as the first one and hits just as hard, and has about 300 recognizable versions of Spider-man. Do I have some complaints? Yes, but none so large...
She Said: Directed by Maria Schrader. With Lola Petticrew, Katherine Laheen, Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan. New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor break one of the most important stories in a generation – a story that helped ignite a movement and shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood. An emotionally exhausting but somehow still dry account of the recent scandal that burned through Hollywood, starting with film producer Harvey Weinstein. All the pieces are there and you’ll welcome to watch, but there’s not a whole lot of new or groundbreaking content to be...
Fast X: Directed by Louis Leterrier. With Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham, Jordana Brewster. Dom Toretto and his family are targeted by the vengeful son of drug kingpin Hernan Reyes. Things move very fast in this, the 11th movie in the franchise (don’t forget to remember to not forget about Hobbes and Shaw!) and is the start of a trilogy of movies that might could possibly finish up this furious story that they’ve been telling for over 20 years. Jason Momoa is a breath of fresh air in terms of bad guys for these films, we’ve seen many mustache...
A Civil Action: Directed by Steven Zaillian. With John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Tony Shalhoub, William H. Macy. A tenacious lawyer takes on a case involving two companies responsible for causing several children to be diagnosed with leukemia due to the town’s water supply being contaminated, at the risk of bankrupting his firm and career. “A Civil Action” was released in 1998, directed by Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Money Ball), and stars John Travolta, Robert Duvall, William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub, John Lithgow, James Gandolfini, and has an appearance by world renowned comedian Stephen Fry. The plot follows a hot shot...
Transfusion: Directed by Matt Nable. With Sam Worthington, Phoebe Tonkin, Matt Nable, Susie Porter. A former Special Forces operative thrust into the criminal underworld to keep his only son from being taken from him. There’s something to be said for the formula that they’re trying to do here, but this film didn’t stick the landing and they left something ineffable out of the story. The synopsis above is wrong of course, he was having a perfectly fine life before an incident happened to his pregnant wife that left him and his middle school son without a mother or wife. There’s...
Eugenie: Directed by Jesús Franco. With Maria Rohm, Marie Liljedahl, Jack Taylor, Christopher Lee. An innocent girl goes to spend the weekend on an island with a woman and her brother, but soon finds herself entangled in a web of sexual experiments. Undeservedly rated “X”, which I think is largely from both the lesbian kissin’ and the satanic rituals, other than that, this is a sometime out of focus suspense film set to a soundtrack that sounds like the cousin of Tinto Brass, which isn’t a good fit for what they’re trying to do here. While they’re being all spooky...
Deep Water: Directed by Adrian Lyne. With Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Grace Jenkins. A well-to-do husband who allows his wife to have affairs in order to avoid a divorce becomes a prime suspect in the disappearance of her lovers. The description of the film up there is completely wrong, there’s absolutely no “understanding” and Affleck’s character is very much aware of his wife’s infidelity and is very much not ok with what’s going on. It’s a story by numbers movie right up until the third act in which absolutely everything gets flipped upside down and there’s a...
Inside: Directed by Vasilis Katsoupis. With Willem Dafoe, Gene Bervoets, Eliza Stuyck, Andrew Blumenthal. Nemo, a high-end art thief, is trapped in a New York penthouse after his heist doesn’t go as planned. Locked inside with nothing but priceless works of art, he must use all his cunning and ingenuity to survive. I feel like this is a good movie. But I didn’t like it. There’s a lot to like, but I think the end result isn’t something that I like. I WANT to like it, but alas, I do not. Is this art? Buy On Amazon!
The Portable Door: Directed by Jeffrey Walker. With Christoph Waltz, Patrick Gibson, Damon Herriman, Sophie Wilde. Paul Carpenter is an intern at a mysterious London firm with unconventional employers, including a CEO who wants to disrupt the ancient magical world with modern corporate practices. An adorable and loveable movie about a guy finding his place in the world and just going with the flow when it turns out that his place is in a magical….place? It was a pleasure to see Sam Neill an Christopher Waltz again, I’m not sure if I’ve seen Sophie Wilde or Patrick Gibson before, but...
