Category: Reviews of Movies

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Three Thousand Years of Longing

Three Thousand Years of Longing: Directed by George Miller. With Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, Erdil Yasaroglu, Sarah Houbolt. A lonely scholar, on a trip to Istanbul, discovers a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. I didn’t expect to like this as much as I did, the trailer was pretty vague about what I was getting myself into, but that might have worked in my favor, as I didn’t expect it to go in the direction that it ultimately went in. There’s a good story here, some great visual effects, and I highly suggest it. Buy...

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Directed by Ryan Coogler. With Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke. The people of Wakanda fight to protect their home from intervening world powers as they mourn the death of King T’Challa. There is nearly nothing about this film that I enjoyed. I hate to say that, as Chadwick Boseman was damn near perfect as the Black Panther, but he was really only great in movies that didn’t have Black Panther in the title, that first one completely lost me in the plot and lack of logic in its science fiction. Director Ryan Coogler...

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Don’t Worry Darling

Don’t Worry Darling: Directed by Olivia Wilde. With Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde. A 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community begins to worry that his glamorous company could be hiding disturbing secrets. A rather fantastic look into what we get when we ask for too much from the people we love. I love where they went with the movie and could see this being either something that gets dismissed, but I think it deserves more than that. Buy On Amazon!

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Fathers’ Day

Fathers’ Day: Directed by Ivan Reitman. With Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Nastassja Kinski. A woman cons two old boyfriends into searching for her runaway son by convincing both that they are the boy’s father. A funny film that didn’t land the way I was hoping it would, both Robin and Billy are near the top of their game, but there wasn’t much of a plot to really work with and what was there was mostly nonsensical fun. Buy On Amazon!

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Director by Night

Director by Night: Directed by Anthony Giacchino. With Mike Bryson, Anthony Giacchino, Josephine Giacchino, Michael Giacchino. “DIRECTOR BY NIGHT” follows film composer Michael Giacchino’s first foray into directing. I thought this was going to be another one of the interesting but low effort ‘behind the scenes’ that they do for every new Star Wars or Marvel series, but it ended up being a heartfelt look at the director’s life and how he came to be in the movie business. If you haven’t checked out “Werewolf by Night” yet, it’s pretty good, and this director documentary is about as long and...

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Starship Troopers 4k Steelbook

Starship Troopers: Directed by Paul Verhoeven. With Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey. Humans in a fascist, militaristic future wage war with giant alien bugs. This is for the 4k transfer that was recently released in a classy looking Steelbook case, which I found on the Amazon. The case is worth the premium for physical collectors, the inside and outside have eye catching artwork and the discs have some cool visuals too. It’s a rarity to see these for sale anywhere other than Best Buy these days, so I was super happy to see it on Jeffery’s...

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Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday

Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday: Directed by George Kirby, Harry Kirby. With Scott Adkins, Ray Stevenson, Perry Benson, Sarah Chang. The Accident Man, is back and this time he must beat the top assassins in the world, to protect the ungrateful son of a mafia boss, save the life of his only friend and rekindle his relationship with his maniacal father figure. Not as bad as I was thinking it was going to be, in fact I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this, a film about an assassin that makes all his hits look like accidents. This is the...

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Hocus Pocus 2

Hocus Pocus 2: Directed by Anne Fletcher. With Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, Whitney Peak. Two young women accidentally bring back the Sanderson Sisters to modern day Salem and must figure out how to stop the child-hungry witches from wreaking havoc on the world. I think I stayed awake for most of this, but honestly go watch the first one again, it’s on Disney+ and it’s in 4k/hdr and you’ll get to see all the same jokes, just done better. Buy On Amazon!

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Terrifier 2

Terrifier 2: Directed by Damien Leone. With Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton, Jenna Kanell, Catherine Corcoran. After being resurrected by a sinister entity, Art the Clown returns to the timid town of Miles County where he targets a teenage girl and her younger brother on Halloween night. I haven’t a clue why I watched this with, but boy howdy was it a good time. There’s some real stupidity going on with the limits of what this new horror icon can get up to, but Lauren LaVera more than makes up for anything that I could complain about. The camp is...

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X

X: Directed by Ti West. With Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Kid Cudi. In 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make an adult film in rural Texas, but when their reclusive, elderly hosts catch them in the act, the cast find themselves fighting for their lives. A horror film done right, but no big surprise, it’s A24 after all! There’s a ton of foreshadowing, but not all of it is very obvious that there’s a set up happening, but other times it’s as obvious as a gator coming right at you! Buy On Amazon!

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Slayers

Slayers: Directed by K. Asher Levin. With Thomas Jane, Kara Hayward, Jack Donnelly, Lydia Hearst. A group of superstar influencers are drawn to a reclusive billionaire’s mansion only to find themselves trapped in the lair of an evil vampire. The only way out is to be saved by a famous online gamer and an old school vampire hunter. Low budget, but still fun, Jane’s fake beard is truly the highlight of the entire endeavor. Buy On Amazon!

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Black Adam

Black Adam: Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. With Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Pierce Brosnan, Noah Centineo. Nearly 5,000 years after he was bestowed with the almighty powers of the Egyptian gods – and imprisoned just as quickly – Black Adam is freed from his earthly tomb, ready to unleash his unique form of justice on the modern world. Surprisingly, this is likely the very best that DC has done in recent memory. Nothing about this film is really worthy of complaint, other than the use of noted racist and general POS Kanye’s music about half way through, something that I’m sure...

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Bodies Bodies Bodies

Bodies Bodies Bodies: Directed by Halina Reijn. With Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, Chase Sui Wonders. When a group of rich 20-somethings plan a hurricane party at a remote family mansion, a party game turns deadly in this fresh and funny look at backstabbing, fake friends, and one party gone very, very wrong. One of the rare misses for me from the A24 movie production machine. There’s a lot of the elements that I like from their other work, but in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” the silly and vapid characters are so unbelievably ridiculous that I found it hard to...

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Spirit Halloween

Spirit Halloween: Directed by David Poag. With Donovan Colan, Jaiden J. Smith, Dylan Martin Frankel, Marissa Reyes. When a Halloween store opens in a deserted strip-mall, three friends, thinking they’ve outgrown trick or treating, decide to spend the night locked inside. But their night of spook-filled fun soon turns to outlandish survival. A good family friendly horror film of a man cursed to inhabit a curse building that was curse long ago by a curse giving curse giver. This cursed film doesn’t feature any actual cursing, so there’s plenty of fun for anyone over the age of say…5. that’s the...

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One Hour Photo

One Hour Photo: Directed by Mark Romanek. With Robin Williams, Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Dylan Smith. A mentally unstable photo developer targets an upper middle-class family after his obsession with them becomes more sick and disturbing than any of them could imagine. We skipped a couple films from Robin to get to this creepy one in which a man has made connections to a family, only the family doesn’t know that he’s so engrained in their lives. The photo processing itself is a concept that works for this film, but the industry has nearly completely moved over to digital photography...

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Halloween Ends

Halloween Ends: Directed by David Gordon Green. With Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, James Jude Courtney, Rohan Campbell. The saga of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode comes to a spine-chilling climax in the final installment of this trilogy. I’ve read a few headlines from reviews before I got the time to watch “the final” halloween movie, so maybe it was the low expectations, but this was a good bookend to the franchise. It’s obviously not the end for the franchise completely, we’ve seen various endings in the past, but maybe this time Jamie Lee Curtis is done with them? I...

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Hellraiser

Hellraiser: Directed by David Bruckner. With Odessa A’zion, Jamie Clayton, Adam Faison, Drew Starkey. A take on Clive Barker’s 1987 horror classic where a young woman struggling with addiction comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon the Cenobites. Not as good as the best Hellraiser (the first one), nor no where near as bad as the worst one (anything after the second), this 2022 Hulu exclusive release is eminently watchable. Odessa A’zion as the POV character does a fantastic job, the soundtrack is on point, and the cinematography is suitable for the...

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Jack

Jack: Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. With Robin Williams, Diane Lane, Brian Kerwin, Jennifer Lopez. Because of an unusual disorder that has aged him four times faster than a typical human being, a boy looks like a 40-year-old man as he starts fifth grade at public school after being homeschooled. If you were to tell me that Robin Williams really was a kid stuck in a full grown man’s body, it’d be easy to believe. The casting of this film is something else entirely with people like Bill Cosby, Jennifer Lopez, and Diane Lane filling out the on screen talent,...

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Mrs. Doubtfire

Mrs. Doubtfire: Directed by Chris Columbus. With Robin Williams, Sally Field, Pierce Brosnan, Harvey Fierstein. After a bitter divorce, an actor disguises himself as a female housekeeper to spend time with his children held in custody by his former wife. Watching this as a child, it was a hilarious film with some weird consequences at the end. Watching it as an adult, whew, Doubtfire is lucky she didn’t end up in prison for the rest of her life. One of Williams greatest roles, with a fantastic performance by Sally Field as the stick in the mud single mom. Buy On...

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Diary of the Dead

Diary of the Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With Todd Schroeder, Laura de Carteret, Amy Lalonde, Martin Roach. A group of young film students run into real-life zombies while filming a horror movie of their own. A huge step down from the prior movie, everything is too well lit, the script is too unpolished, and the money spread way too thin. It also shows it’s age with some references to myspace, which is still a thing, but it’s not the thing that they reference in the movie. There’s some fun parts, like the Amish guy with the sickle, but...

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Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049: Directed by Denis Villeneuve. With Ryan Gosling, Dave Bautista, Robin Wright, Mark Arnold. Young Blade Runner K’s discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former Blade Runner Rick Deckard, who’s been missing for thirty years. I watched this again on a whim (aka reddit marketing got to me) and it still holds up, I still love damn near everything about it, and as a bonus, I realized that the female replicant that does a fair bit of murdering is Sylvia Hoeks, which I now love to hate her on “See” where she plays the...

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Land of the Dead

Land of the Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento. The living dead have taken over the world, and the last humans live in a walled city to protect themselves as they come to grips with the situation. There’s a Tuba zombie, a gas station zombie, and other zombies that have started to remember their lives before they were zombies and they’re starting to live out their lives again. It’s about as weird and silly as you’d expect. The highlight of how silly the movie takes itself is the soldier that uses...

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Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Dawn of the Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross. Following an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia S.W.A.T. team members, a traffic reporter, and his television executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall. This is my favorite of the Romero zombie films, I like the idea of settings up a fortress and riding the whole thing out, and what better place than a late 70’s mall? This was near the absolute height of mall culture. The ending gets silly in the way...

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The Munsters

The Munsters: Directed by Rob Zombie. With Richard Brake, Jorge Garcia, Sylvester McCoy, Catherine Schell. Reboot of “The Munsters”, that followed a family of monsters who moves from Transylvania to an American suburb. “This is a bunch of cornball hooey!” That’s an actual quote from the movie, and it’s completely accurate. This is a movie filled with cornball hooey, which if you’ve seen the original tv or any of the half dozen made for tv movies that were either sequels or reboots, you knew to expect this. The lights are garish, the special makeup is way over the top, the...

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Spin Me Round

Spin Me Round: Directed by Jeff Baena. With Alison Brie, Jake Picking, Stella Chestnut, Lil Rel Howery. A woman wins an all-expenses-paid trip to a company’s gorgeous “institute” outside of Florence, and also the chance to meet the restaurant chain’s wealthy and charismatic owner. She finds a different adventure than the one she imagined. A nice low budget film with big impacts, but it’ll take a bit of talking through the entire thing with buddies to get the full effect. Jeff Baena (LIfe After Beth, The Little Hours, Horse Girl) is no stranger to quality films and working with Alison...

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Werewolf by Night

Werewolf by Night: Directed by Michael Giacchino. With Gael GarcĂ­a Bernal, Laura Donnelly, Harriet Sansom Harris, Kirk R. Thatcher. Follows a lycanthrope superhero who fights evil using the abilities given to him by a curse brought on by his bloodline. So much better than I thought it was going to be, and so much shorter! The story didn’t break the one hour mark and I think it’s made all that much better because of it. There’s some fun appearances, some great foreshadowing and the use of black and white with color is among the best out there. Buy On Amazon!

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Dawn of the Dead

Dawn of the Dead: Directed by Zack Snyder. With Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer. A nurse, a policeman, a young married couple, a salesman and other survivors of a worldwide plague that is producing aggressive, flesh-eating zombies, take refuge in a mega Midwestern shopping mall. Better than the original, but only just barely. There’s different focuses, with the og more interested in how the survivers survive in the building and this remake being focused on cool visuals and shooting zeeks, but considering the director and writers, it’s remarkably conservative with the explosions and bloodlust. Buy On Amazon!

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Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman. A ragtag group of Pennsylvanians barricade themselves in an old farmhouse to remain safe from a horde of flesh-eating ghouls that are ravaging the East Coast of the United States. The movie opens with a couple going out to a cemetery 200 miles away from home to put a wreath on a grave. Maybe it’s a brother and sister? Maybe! But my main focus is that this is a surprisingly fantastic transfer, I had heard the copyright on the film had...

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Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead: Directed by George A. Romero. With Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato, Jarlath Conroy. As the world is overrun by zombies, a small group of scientists and military personnel dwelling in an underground bunker in Florida must determine whether they should educate, eliminate or escape the undead horde. Some casual racism that’s hard to get past, but this movie (and the franchise) came up in a discussion about zombie films in which the various characters had the RIGHT idea about what to do. In this case, at the beginning of the film one of the helicoptor...

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Confess, Fletch

Confess, Fletch: Directed by Greg Mottola. With Lorenza Izzo, Jon Hamm, Anna Osceola, Marcia Gay Harden. After becoming the prime suspect in multiple murders, Fletch strives to prove his innocence while simultaneously searching for his fiancĂ©’s stolen art collection. I had some minor misgivings of this movie about the same character that Chevy Chase played nearly 30 years ago, which is based on a series of books, which means it’s a different story and Jon Hamm can do whatever he wants with the character without really being beholden to what Chase did with him. In many ways it’s a situation...

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Avatar

Avatar: Directed by James Cameron. With Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang. A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home. Re-released to theaters for 2022 to prep people for the December 2022 release of the sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water”. I’ve always thought this was a solid film, though the “white savior” parts of the film are getting more and more difficult to ignore and appreciate. Something interesting about this release is that they upframed it from the...

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Pleasure

Pleasure: Directed by Ninja Thyberg. With Sofia Kappel, Zelda Morrison, Evelyn Claire, Chris Cock. Bella Cherry arrives in Los Angeles with dreams of becoming an adult film star, but she soon learns that fame won’t come easy as she harnesses her ambition and cunning to rise to the top of this mesmerizing and singular world. There’s a old familiar saying that goes something like “I’ll know it’s porn when I see it” and while there’s porn in this film, I wouldn’t classify it as pornographic. It’s a great look into the modern porn industry and Sofia Kappel does a great...

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DC League of Super-Pets

DC League of Super-Pets: Directed by Jared Stern, Sam J. Levine. With Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Kate McKinnon, John Krasinski. Krypto the Super-Dog and Superman are inseparable best friends, sharing the same superpowers and fighting crime side by side in Metropolis. However, Krypto must master his own powers for a rescue mission when Superman is kidnapped. All the marketing pushed Johnson and Hart, for all the obvious reasons, those guys are super marketable and never fail to please, but I’m here to tell you their roles in “DC League of Super-Pets” they take an absolute backseat to Kate McKinnon’s fantastic...

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Live Nude Girls Unite!

Live Nude Girls Unite!: Directed by Vicky Funari, Julia Query. With Julia Query, Jane, Siobhan Brooks, Kristina. Documentary look at the 1996-97 effort of the dancers and support staff at a San Francisco peep show, The Lusty Lady, to unionize. Angered by arbitrary and race-based wage policies, customers’ surreptitious video cameras, and no paid sick days or holidays, the dancers get help from the Service Employees International local and enter protracted bargaining with the union-busting law firm that management hires. We see the women work, sort out their demands, and go through the difficulties of bargaining. The narrator is Julia...

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Directed by Norman Z. McLeod. With Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Boris Karloff, Fay Bainter. A clumsy daydreamer gets caught up in a sinister conspiracy. I had no idea that Bill Stiller’s 2013 film of the same name was a remake of this 1947 film, but when I stumbled upon the 1947 version on Kanopy and immediately gave it a go and I’m happy I did! The broad strokes between the two films are essentially the same, there’s a guy in a good job at a publisher that frequently lets his daydreaming get in the...

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Emily the Criminal

Emily the Criminal: Directed by John Patton Ford. With Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Jonathan Avigdori, Kim Yarbrough. Down on her luck and saddled with debt, Emily gets involved in a credit card scam that pulls her into the criminal underworld of Los Angeles, ultimately leading to deadly consequences. This might be Aubrey Plaza’s best dramatic role. Not to set your expectations too high, but boy howdy this was a hum dinger of a film and it would be well worth your time checking it out. Buy On Amazon!

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Fall

Fall: Directed by Scott Mann. With Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Mason Gooding, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Best friends Becky and Hunter find themselves at the top of a 2,000-foot radio tower. I think going into this movie I had low expectations, but by the end of the movie I was impressed with how everything played out. The movie opens on a fantastic great opening sequence to set up the characters and motivations, followed closely by some great great shots of a house while a voicemail plays setting up the rest of the film. True, there’s some exceptionally stupid behavior on...

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Look Away

Look Away: Directed by Assaf Bernstein. With India Eisley, Jason Isaacs, Mira Sorvino, Penelope Mitchell. Maria, an alienated high-school student, has her life turned upside down when she switches places with her sinister mirror image. The idea that there’s another darker version of you on the other side of the mirror is nothing new, but this is one of the better versions of that story. India Eisley is a new actor to me, but she absolutely killed in in “Look Away” playing two versions of the same mousey high schooler and Assaf Bernstein uses some exceptionally good camera work with...

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How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town

How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town: Directed by Jeremy LaLonde. With Jewel Staite, Ennis Esmer, Lauren Lee Smith, Katharine Isabelle. When “town slut” turned sex columnist Cassie Cranston returns for her mother’s funeral it spices things up in the small town of Beaver’s Ridge when a group of eccentric town folk, each with their own motives, convince her to plan an orgy. I think this is the first time that I’ve seen Jewel Staite in the leading role of a movie, kinda wish we could see more of her, other than her time on Firefly then Stargate...

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The Visitor

The Visitor: Directed by Giulio Paradisi. With Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston. The soul of a young girl with telekinetic powers becomes the prize in a fight between forces of good and evil. I started this one becuase I was drawn in by the amazing artwork on the Kanopy page for it: www.kanopy.com/en/video/11413791 but alas, that artwork did not live up to what I was hoping for. Even the art on the wikipedia page is pretty cool: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visitor_(1979_film) The movie is nominally about a war between cosmic powers for the fate of humanity, but that story gets...

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Marriage Story

Marriage Story: Directed by Noah Baumbach. With Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Julia Greer, Azhy Robertson. Noah Baumbach’s incisive and compassionate look at a marriage breaking up and a family staying together. It’s hard to see this movie as anything other than a direct attack on ethics, and while I love her as an actress, the character that Scarlett Johansson plays here is an absolutely abhorrent villain that drags her kid through the mud and breaks nearly every promise or agreement that she made with her husband. I can’t believe this was the intent, but every opportunity for her to act...

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Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho: Directed by Edgar Wright. With Thomasin McKenzie, Aimee Cassettari, Rita Tushingham, Colin Mace. An aspiring fashion designer is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters a dazzling wannabe singer. But the glamour is not all it appears to be and the dreams of the past start to crack and splinter into something darker. From all the trailers and marketing that I had vaguely seen out of the corners of my eyes, I had the impression this was going to be a fabulous story of the 60’s with dancing and singing. We did get that...

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Hook

Hook: Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins. When Captain James Hook kidnaps his children, an adult Peter Pan must return to Neverland and reclaim his youthful spirit in order to challenge his old enemy. At long last, my Robin Williams journey has brought me to one of my favorites of his career. Even though the directory doesn’t hold a special place for it in his heart, I’ll always be grateful for the massive display of talent and effort that’s exhibited in every scene of “Hook”. Buy On Amazon!

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Samaritan

Samaritan: Directed by Julius Avery. With Sylvester Stallone, Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton, Pilou Asbæk, Dascha Polanco. A young boy learns that a superhero who was thought to have gone missing after an epic battle twenty years ago may in fact still be around. Initially written as a movie, then released as a comic, then adapted for the big screen, then bought and distributed by Amazon, the journey for the film was long and difficult, but now it’s ready for you to consume at your leisure on your device of choice! The movie itself is pretty ok, with many elements of a...

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The Fisher King

The Fisher King: Directed by Terry Gilliam. With Jeff Bridges, Adam Bryant, Paul Lombardi, David Hyde Pierce. A former radio DJ, suicidally despondent because of a terrible mistake he made, finds redemption in helping a deranged homeless man who was an unwitting victim of that mistake. If you want to know what 90’s film making was like, this movie is a great look into the transition from the nitty gritty 80’s style to the slightly less gritty but still grungy around the cuffs 90’s films. This is by no means one of Robin’s better films, nor is it Jeff Bridges’....

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Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee

Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee: Directed by Charlie Russell. With Dean Barrow, Rocco Castoro, Neil Cavuto, Janice Dyson. Life and death of software pioneer John McAfee who developed the software: McAfee Antivirus. I only tangentially knew about John McAfee and what he was up to in the later parts of his life, but this 1hr 45min movie gave a peak behind the curtain and there’s not much to like about what he was up to, from the supposed ties to governmental hacking and cartels to the over use of drugs that eventually lead to his...

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Dave Made a Maze

Dave Made a Maze: Directed by Bill Watterson. With Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Nick Thune, Adam Busch, James Urbaniak. Dave, an artist who has yet to complete anything significant in his career, builds a fort in his living room out of pure frustration, only to wind up trapped by the fantastical pitfalls, booby traps, and critters of his own creation. A sweet story of an artist trying to find himself in an unsure world, coupled with some seriously dark underpinnings. The entire movie is a gift to puppetry and carboard art, and per the credits there was an entire team dedicated...

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Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley: Directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour. With Elle Fanning, Bel Powley, Owen Richards, Joanne Froggatt. Life and facts of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who at 16 met 21 year old poet Percy Shelley, resulting in the writing of Frankenstein. This is apparently pretty dang close to a true story of her life from my understanding and if that’s the case she lives an exceptionally liberated life filled with freedom and heartbreak. There’s nearly nothing about her most famous story in the film, at least not on the surface. It’s not until the very end of the film when one of the...

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Richard Jewell

Richard Jewell: Directed by Clint Eastwood. With Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Brandon Stanley, Ryan Boz. Security guard Richard Jewell is an instant hero after foiling a bomb attack at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, but his life becomes a nightmare when the FBI leaks to the media that he is a suspect in the case. I think we’ve all met people like Richard Jewell, over compensating, overweight, overstimulated people with exceptionally high aspirations but lacking the abilities and authority to accomplish much of what they see for themselves. Despite the air of being an imposter in nearly every scene, Jewell...

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Red Rocket

Red Rocket: Directed by Sean Baker. With Simon Rex, Bree Elrod, Brenda Deiss, Sophie. Mikey Saber is a washed-up porn star who returns to his small Texas hometown, not that anyone really wants him back. Directed by Sean Baker, best known by me for doing The Florida Project, “Red Rocket” has many of the same things that made TFP so captivating, from the shooting style to the dialogue, I really got the feeling that I was a fly on the wall during most of the scenes. The main character “Mike Saber” is a blown out ex-porn star that feels he...