Category: Reviews of Movies

The Fantastic Four: First Steps: Directed by Matt Shakman. With Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn. Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, the Fantastic Four must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer. This is one of the first Marvel movies in a long time that requires absolutely no knowledge of any other comic book film, no knowledge of the comics, and just an appreciation for a retro-futuristic take on a classic family of adventurers. There’s a perfect soundtrack that goes along...

Hellboy: The Crooked Man: Directed by Brian Taylor. With Jack Kesy, Jefferson White, Adeline Rudolph, Leah McNamara. Hellboy and a rookie B.P.R.D. agent in the 1950s are sent to the Appalachians, where they discover a remote community dominated by witches and led by the sinister local demon, the Crooked Man. I actually watched this …months ago? It might have even been last year, but I was so unaffected by the film that I forgot to even put it on a “to review” list. It’s not actually a terrible film, but it had such a limited budget that all it really...

Whisper of the Heart: Directed by Yoshifumi Kondô. With Yoko Honna, Issei Takahashi, Takashi Tachibana, Shigeru Muroi. A love story between a girl who loves reading books and a boy who has previously checked out all of the library books she chooses. This is another exceptionally well crafted look into the lives of normal yet captivating characters that are just living their lives in their normal manner, but through the fascinating lens of Studio Ghibli. I’m about 90% sure that this movie is the inspiration for the lo-fi girl youtube channel that got me through many long nights of studying...

Star Trek: Section 31: Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi. With Michelle Yeoh, Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Robert Kazinsky. In Star Trek: Section 31, Emperor Philippa Georgiou joins a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, and must face the sins of her past. There’s a couple soundtrack elements that remind me of the Borg themes from First Contact, which was a vastly superior film. Also, quick question, at the beginning of the film, when the evil Terrans beam down, there’s like a thousand people there that stretch about a half mile back. can they even hear...

Captain America: Brave New World: Directed by Julius Onah. With Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas. Sam Wilson, the new Captain America, finds himself in the middle of an international incident and must discover the motive behind a nefarious global plan. I have it on blue rays now! It’s a pretty film that missed a couple cool opportunities to be cooler and didn’t stick the landing in the 3rd act. I was ultimately satisfied, but imagine what could have been! Buy On Amazon!

Sonic the Hedgehog 3: Directed by Jeff Fowler. With Jim Carrey, Ben Schwartz, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba. Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails reunite against a powerful new adversary, Shadow, a mysterious villain with powers unlike anything they have faced before. With their abilities outmatched, Team Sonic must seek out an unlikely alliance. I got this for free by signing up for a chicken nugget newsletter and they still haven’t sent me a single email yet. Sonic 3 isn’t as good as the first two, but is still good enough that I’m happy I own this due to my corporate spam sellout....

Pom Poko: Directed by Isao Takahata. With Shinchô Kokontei, Makoto Nonomura, Yuriko Ishida, Norihei Miki. A community of magical shape-shifting raccoon dogs struggle to prevent their forest home from being destroyed by urban development. “Raccoon dogs” are not “racoons” as I understand them, but after a quick wikipedia journey 15 links deep, I remembered that I was watching a movie and got back to this delightful yet depressing story of animals being killed in humanity’s quest for more space. This is mostly a cute story about loveable shapeshifting creature trying to find their way in an increasingly dangerous world, but...

Superman: Directed by James Gunn. With David Corenswet, Alan Tudyk, Grace Chan, Bradley Cooper. Superman must reconcile his alien Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing as reporter Clark Kent. As the embodiment of truth, justice and the human way he soon finds himself in a world that views these as old-fashioned. I got to experience this the same day that I traveled from Florida to Pennsylvania with a day that started at 3am and this showing was at 10pm at an AMC PRIME theater, which was a first for me. The seats were heated, they reclined all the way down...

Lilo & Stitch: Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp. With Maia Kealoha, Sydney Agudong, Chris Sanders, Zach Galifianakis. A lonely Hawaiian girl befriends a runaway alien, helping to mend her fragmented family. A live action version of a movie that meant a whole lot to me and much like their past efforts there’s no real reason for this remake and it adds nothing of value to the franchise. It’s cute and is a perfectly fine movie, but it’s definitely not as good as the animated film. Buy On Amazon!

Predator: Killer of Killers: Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, Joshua Wassung. With Michael Biehn, Doug Cockle, Rick Gonzalez, Damien C. Haas. Three of the fiercest warriors in human history become prey to the ultimate killer of killers. About as good as you can get for science fiction, I’m super happy to see that the Predator franchise is back in good hands and they seem to have a handle on what makes the Predatorverse so appealing to so many people. There’s a lot of world building here and some obvious sequel breadcrumbs, but the three stories here are fantastic. Buy On Amazon!

Wicked: Directed by Jon M. Chu. With Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh. Elphaba, a young woman ridiculed for her green skin, and Galinda, a popular girl, become friends at Shiz University in the Land of Oz. After an encounter with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads. I don’t like to slander well liked movies, but I honestly have no idea what anyone saw in this film. The music is flat, everyone is mean to each other, and the story doesn’t actually start until they get to Oz, which is in the last 30...

Thunderbolts*: Directed by Jake Schreier. With Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lewis Pullman. After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of antiheroes must go on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts. The MCU is back baby! It also never left! I was somewhat disappointed that they didn’t go with the golden age origin story, but the one they had for the movie works in context of the wider universe that’s been rolling for nearly 20 years now. Buy On Amazon!

Venom: The Last Dance: Directed by Kelly Marcel. With Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans. Eddie Brock and Venom must make a devastating decision as they’re pursued by a mysterious military man and alien monsters from Venom’s home world. Watched again with my wife. This was indeed a movie with a character named “Venom” in it. I have no memories of dancing though. Buy On Amazon!

Kraven the Hunter: Directed by J.C. Chandor. With Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola. Kraven’s complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff, starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared. This is a much better film than I was expecting and would have been even better if it had no connection whatsoever to the Spider-man universe, but alas, Kraven is a well known Spider-man villain that isn’t as interesting as he could be when the movie...

Sinners: Directed by Ryan Coogler. With Miles Caton, Saul Williams, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Jack O’Connell. Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back. I finally got around to watching this in an AMC, but sadly missed the Dolby Digital release. I actually tried to see it a few weeks ago, but it had already shifted from the DD theater to the 10 seater and I gave up on seeing it in a theater, but it’s been doing so well...

The 4:30 Movie: Directed by Kevin Smith. With Siena Agudong, Austin Zajur, Kate Micucci, Ming Chen. A group of teens in the 1980s spend the day theater-hopping. I don’t remember seeing a single advertisement for this being in theaters and only caught wind of it on the Amazon “new movies on 4k” page. It likely would not have been a great theater movie, but it was a perfectly fun coming of age movie about movie theaters and the shenanigans that movie fans used to get up to whilst hanging out at the movie theater. Buy On Amazon!

Starchaser: The Legend of Orin: Directed by Steven Hahn. With Joe Colligan, Carmen Argenziano, Noelle North, Anthony De Longis. Set on the subterranean Mine-World, a band of human worker are treated like slaves under the power of the evil overlord Zygon until one, Orin, unearths the hilt of a mythical sword that only he can master. Escaping the planet, he runs into the rogue smuggler Dagg and a pair of helpful droids and the princess, who all team up to return to the Mine-World with a plan to defeat Zygon and free Orin’s enslaved people. Starchaser: The Legend of Orin...

Porco Rosso: Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With Shûichirô Moriyama, Tokiko Katô, Bunshi Katsura VI, Tsunehiko Kamijô. In 1930s Italy, a veteran World War I pilot is cursed to look like an anthropomorphic pig. I went into Porco Rosso with modest expectations, not entirely sure what to make of a film about a World War I fighter pilot who, as part of the story, is cursed to live in the body of a pig. What I found, though, was a surprisingly rich and layered experience—one that blended whimsical fantasy with poignant historical context, and mixed lighthearted action with a deeper emotional...

Kiki’s Delivery Service: Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With Minami Takayama, Rei Sakuma, Kappei Yamaguchi, Keiko Toda. Along with her black cat Jiji, Kiki settles in a seaside town and starts a high-flying delivery service. Here begins her magical encounter with independence and responsibility, making lifelong friends and finding her place in the world. This is the movie that actually got the ball rolling on my desire to watch all the Studio Ghibli films, as one of my coworkers had a stain glass mural in her window that features Jiji all over the place, which I thought was cute and whimsical...

Robot Carnival: Directed by Atsuko Fukushima, Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Hiroyuki Kitazume, Kôji Morimoto, Takashi Nakamura, Yasuomi Umetsu, Manabu Ôhashi, Hidetoshi Ômori, Katsuhiro Ôtomo. With Kôji Moritsugu, Yayoi Maki, Keiko Hanagata, Kumiko Takizawa. A collection of short stories, made by different animators with “robot” as the working title. This is on Amazon Prime and I fully have no idea how it ended up in front of me, but it was such a fantastic experience that I’m happy it was in my queue, or suggestion list or whatever the mess of Prime lists actually is. It’s a collection of short stories that range...

My Neighbor Totoro: Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, Shigesato Itoi, Sumi Shimamoto. When two girls move to the country to be near their ailing mother, they have adventures with the wondrous forest spirits who live nearby. Decidedly lighter fair in comparison to Grave of the Fireflies or even Valley of the Wind, there’s still some extremely emotionally charged moments that really had my heart getting ready to break. I was luckily saved from that sad fate by a well timed catbus, for which I’m grateful that were introduced to earlier in the film, because as a...

Grave of the Fireflies: Directed by Isao Takahata. With Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Yoshiko Shinohara, Akemi Yamaguchi. A young boy and his little sister struggle to survive in Japan during World War II. I already knew what this movie was about, so when it came time to watch it on my journey to see all of Studio Ghibli, I hesitated for a moment. Was I ready for a beautiful, yet heavy film about the final days of World War 2? I thought I was, but I was honestly expecting it to be told through allegory, much like the first two...

Ash: Directed by Flying Lotus. With Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott. A woman wakes up on a distant planet and finds the crew of her space station viciously killed. Her investigation into what happened sets in motion a terrifying chain of events. There’s a few big names and familiar faces in “Ash” that I had limitedly high hopes for it, perhaps I trusted the trailer a bit too much, but the final product didn’t do it for me. The story has been done many times before where your POV character wakes up with no memory of what’s...

Castle in the Sky: Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With Mayumi Tanaka, Keiko Yokozawa, Kotoe Hatsui, Minori Terada. Pazu’s life changes when he meets Sheeta, a girl whom pirates are chasing for her crystal amulet, which has the potential to locate Laputa, a legendary castle floating in the sky. My favorite quote from this movie: “All good pirates listen to their mom!” Another post apocalyptic tale from Studio Ghibli, this one is much more whimsical, but none the less captivating with a strong soundtrack, a story that really works well, and characters that feel as real as it gets. I’m sad...

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With Sumi Shimamoto, Mahito Tsujimura, Hisako Kyôda, Gorô Naya. Warrior and pacifist Princess Nausicaä desperately struggles to prevent two warring nations from destroying themselves and their dying planet. I’ve never watched a Studio Ghibli film before, at least not to my knowledge. One of my co-workers had an adorable stainglass thing with a cat on it and she said that it was from one of their films (Kiki’s Delivery Service iirc), and this company has been constantly on the periphery of many different genres that I love, but I...

The Electric State: Directed by Anthony Russo, Joe Russo. With Woody Norman, Millie Bobby Brown, Ann Russo, Greg Cromer. An orphaned teen hits the road with a mysterious robot to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a smuggler and his wisecracking sidekick. The trailers for this looked amazing, but what we got was less than amazing and more bland Netflix straight to vhs than I was really hoping for. A few people have said that the film was made for kids and that might explain how mediocre and unchallenging the dialogue was, but that trailer made me feel this...

Moana 2: Directed by David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller. With Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Hualalai Chung, Rose Matafeo. After receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors, Moana must journey to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she’s ever faced. While I enjoyed the film, it didn’t rise to the same level of appreciation as the first film, and felt like a much smaller adventure than what I think was intended. It’s still an exceptionally enjoyable adventure! Buy On Amazon!

Piece by Piece: Directed by Morgan Neville. With Pharrell Williams, Morgan Neville, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani. A vibrant journey through the life of Pharrell Williams, told through the lens of LEGO animation. A visual feast of a movie that I knew was going to be a biographical story, but my wife had no clue and I’m not sure how I would have liked to have had it. It’s a great film and the soundtrack is as rich as you can get, but as a well done biographical story, there’s no real action to it. I enjoyed it for what it...

Constantine: Directed by Francis Lawrence. With Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Djimon Hounsou. Detective Angela approaches Constantine, a demon hunter, to help her investigate her twin sister’s mysterious death. As he digs deeper, he realizes that demons are trying to enter the human world. Still a solid movie, there’s been constant talk of a possible sequel, and while I’ll watch it if it happens, I’m happy with this being a stand alone film. It’s not the most faithful adaptation in terms of character specifics, but it gets the fundamentals right, so the lack of blonde hair and british accent...

Warning Sign: Directed by Hal Barwood. With Sam Waterston, Kathleen Quinlan, Yaphet Kotto, Jeffrey DeMunn. A timid security guard, her ailing supervisor-mentor, her sheriff husband and an alcoholic former scientist team up to stop a viral outbreak in a rural biological weapons lab, while a government agent grapples with the political outcome. This is another tiktok influenced film, the scene I saw was the initial lockdown, and the ret of the film was just as good as the teaser scene suggested it would be. The crux of it is that there’s a bioweapons research company doing business under the guise...

The Gorge: Directed by Scott Derrickson. With Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu. Two highly-trained operatives become close after being sent to protect opposite sides of a mysterious gorge. When an evil emerges, they must work together to survive what lies within. While this is a much more serious film than I initially thought it was going to be, there’s still some of the stupid idiots doing stupid things in a situation that everyone involved should known better. The Gorge (the location in the movie) is a wonderfully novel concept with a great execution that I fully applaud....

This Is the Tom Green Documentary: Directed by Tom Green. With Tom Green, Mary Jane Green, Phil Giroux, Howard Wagman. Comedian Tom Green’s journey takes unexpected turns as he shifts from wild MTV stunts to confronting serious health challenges, ultimately finding peace away from Hollywood on his Canadian farm. Tom Green was ever present while I was in high school, but I never found myself enjoying his efforts, they seemed too intentionally random and felt inauthentic. There’s an entire genre of comedy based around that type of humor that I just don’t go for, but enough people do that it...

Earth Abides: Created by Todd Komarnicki. With Alexander Ludwig, Jessica Frances Dukes, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Elyse Levesque. After months of isolation, Isherwood “Ish” Williams, learns that most of the world has fallen to a mysterious illness. Yet, despite his instincts to further isolate, Ish leads the charge to develop a new civilization. I’ve seen a ton of post-apocalyptic stories in so many different variations, and not many of them are able to make me feel good about the story by the end of it, feeling hopeful and open to the idea that humanity will do better than it did before. Mind...

The Wild Robot: Directed by Chris Sanders. With Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy. After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island’s animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose. As good as I was expecting, and I was expecting a good movie considering the stupid trailer made me cry stupid tears. They hit all the notes required to pull the strings of the heart and have all the plot elements to make it all a wonderful experience. It’s also pretty good...

Captain America: Brave New World: Directed by Julius Onah. With Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas. Sam Wilson, the new Captain America, finds himself in the middle of an international incident and must discover the motive behind a nefarious global plan. We’re not necessarily back to the amazing level of story and effort that the original Captain America movie had, but we’re no where near the lows of recent MCU movies. There’s still some unfortunate CGI in the third act and a few scenes that look like they were filmed in both The Volume and a bluescreen at...

Code 8: Part II: Directed by Jeff Chan. With Robbie Amell, Stephen Amell, Alex Mallari Jr., Sirena Gulamgaus. Follows a girl fighting to get justice for her brother who was slain by corrupt police officers. She enlists the help of an ex-con and his former partner to face off against a highly regarded and well-protected police sergeant. While the original movie didn’t blow me away, I was happily surprised by this sequel, it was much less frantic and much more paced. There’s a decent story this time around with tales of family redemption, financial consequences, politics, and bad cops involved...

Star Trek: Section 31: Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi. With Michelle Yeoh, Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Robert Kazinsky. In Star Trek: Section 31, Emperor Philippa Georgiou joins a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, and must face the sins of her past. I watched this over the weekend and it was exactly what I thought it was going to be: for better or worse, it’s a vehicle to highlight the fact that Academy Award Winner Michelle Yeoh was under contract to do more Star Trek content and they couldn’t figure out how to use her...

The Crow: Directed by Rupert Sanders. With Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs, Danny Huston, Josette Simon. Soulmates Eric and Shelly are brutally murdered. Given a chance to save the love of his life, Eric must sacrifice himself and traverse the worlds of the living and the dead, seeking revenge. The blood soaked title card sequence is pretty cool, and the rest of the film is equally drenched in gallons of blood, there’s not a whole lot that I can point to as innovative or all that interesting. The franchise itself has done a ton of cool stuff, but has driven most...

The Right Stuff: Directed by Philip Kaufman. With Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid. The U.S. space program’s development from the breaking of the sound barrier to selection of the Mercury 7 astronauts, from a group of test pilots with a more seat-of-the-pants approach than the program’s more cautious engineers preferred. I swear that I’ve seen this in the past and I sought it out to watch whilst constructing space themed LEGOs, though that plastic plan fell apart due to completing the task during my last binge of LEGO meditations. I had no memory of the film though,...

Alien: Romulus: Directed by Fede Alvarez. With Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. Watch again with my wife, and she enjoyed it just fine. I enjoyed it just fine again. Buy On Amazon!

Lulu Belle: Directed by Leslie Fenton. With Dorothy Lamour, George Montgomery, Albert Dekker, Otto Kruger. Lulu Belle and George Davis marry despite opposition. Financial struggles lead Lulu to work at a club, causing George’s jealousy and imprisonment. Lulu becomes a Broadway star but chooses George over a wealthy suitor upon his release. Movie from 1948 starts with a show in which two people are shot and the rest of movie is told in flashback, with the exception of the final scene in which we discover it was the obvious person that shot them all along! Lulu Bell is played by...

Madame Web: Directed by S.J. Clarkson. With Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor. Forced to confront her past, Cassandra Webb, a Manhattan paramedic that may have clairvoyant abilities, forms a relationship with three young women destined for powerful futures, if they can survive their threatening present. Watching this at home wasn’t a jarring as watching it in a theater. It feels much more at home on a smaller screen with distractions happening every 20 minutes and a wife asking questions every other scene about the scene that just happened. The story isn’t all that complicated, it has plenty...

A Family Affair: Directed by Richard LaGravenese. With Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King, Kathy Bates. A surprising romance kicks off comic consequences for a young woman, her mother, and her movie-star boss as they face the complications of love, sex, and identity. This was the late night movie that I settled on to close out our lazy snow day and it turned out to be much more than I was expecting from everyone involved. The story is much more nuanced, the characters much more believable, and the situations all less sitcom / soap opera than Netflix is known for....

The Day After Tomorrow: Directed by Roland Emmerich. With Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Dash Mihok. Jack Hall, paleoclimatologist, must make a daring trek from Washington, D.C. to New York City to reach his son, trapped in the cross-hairs of a sudden international storm which plunges the planet into a new Ice Age. This was the first movie we watched after the apocalyptic snow storm here in Florida, we received well over 2 inches of snow! It promptly sorta melted, then turned into ice and now it’s unsafe to drive on and we have icicles. Buy On Amazon!

Star Trek Beyond: Directed by Justin Lin. With Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana. The crew of the USS Enterprise explores the furthest reaches of uncharted space, where they encounter a new ruthless enemy, who puts them, and everything the Federation stands for, to the test. I watched this on January 20th, 2025 because there was nothing better to watch on TV. I still love this film and am sad that there hasn’t been a Trek movie since. Buy On Amazon!

Star Trek Into Darkness: Directed by J.J. Abrams. With Leonard Nimoy, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana. After the crew of the Enterprise find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one-man weapon of mass destruction. I watched this on January 20th, 2025 because there was nothing better to watch on TV. It’s still a well made but goofy movie that I have many issues with. Buy On Amazon!

Star Trek: Directed by J.J. Abrams. With Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana. The brash James T. Kirk tries to live up to his father’s legacy with Mr. Spock keeping him in check as a vengeful Romulan from the future creates black holes to destroy the Federation one planet at a time. I watched this on January 20th, 2025 because there was nothing better to watch on TV. Buy On Amazon!