Adam Selvidge's Website Blog
Cop Out: Directed by Kevin Smith. With Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Juan Carlos Hernández, Cory Fernandez. Jimmy’s rare baseball card is robbed. Since it’s his only hope to pay for his daughter’s upcoming wedding, he recruits his cop partner Paul to track down the robber, a memorabilia-obsessed gangster. Many people point to this film when they say that Kevin Smith can’t hack it has a director of anything other than his own material and while I agree that his strengths are with things that he has complete editorial control over, I disagree with the idea that this is a bad...
Loki: Created by Michael Waldron. With Tom Hiddleston, Sophia Di Martino, Owen Wilson, Wunmi Mosaku. The mercurial villain Loki resumes his role as the God of Mischief in a new series that takes place after the events of “Avengers: Endgame.” Now that there’s over 12 hours of dedicated Loki content, I think we can fully say that he’s on the same level as Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America. After the final episode of Season Two, I think I can say that they’ve captured the lightning in the bottle that I so enjoyed from Endgame and while this isn’t technically...
Roman J. Israel, Esq.: Directed by Dan Gilroy. With Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell, Carmen Ejogo, Lynda Gravatt. Roman J. Israel, Esq., a driven, idealistic defense attorney, finds himself in a tumultuous series of events that lead to a crisis and the necessity for extreme action. I’ve recently become somewhat addicted to tiktok and one of the more interesting things they have is random highlight clips of movies and television shows and I flipped onto one featuring Denzel Washington acting as a belligerent lawyer who gets a $5k fine from a judge who was unhappy with all the talking back that...
Star Trek: Prodigy: Created by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman. With Rylee Alazraqui, Dee Bradley Baker, Brett Gray, Angus Imrie. A group of enslaved teenagers steal a derelict Starfleet vessel to escape and explore the galaxy. The second half the first season was released a while ago on BR but I’m just now getting around to watching it on disc instead of streaming and there’s not much difference between the two. This second half is a better watch than the first half with some amazing spaceship content that blew me away the first time I watched it and it held up...
The Night Listener: Directed by Patrick Stettner. With Toni Collette, Robin Williams, Joe Morton, Bobby Cannavale. In the midst of his crumbling relationship, a radio show host begins speaking to his biggest fan, a young boy, via the telephone. But when questions about the boy’s identity come up, the host’s life is thrown into chaos. There’s a solid story that could be made from this premise that’s based on the idea of a true story that maybe really happened, but this version of it isn’t as appealing as it could have been. I have no complaints about Robin Williams or...
Smashed: Directed by James Ponsoldt. With Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aaron Paul, Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally. A married couple whose bond is built on a mutual love of alcohol gets their relationship put to the test when the wife decides to get sober. I was not expecting to see both Nick Offerman and Megan Mullaly in the same film and while they don’t have much on screen time together, they both really fleshed out the rather simple premise which turns into an emotionally roller-coaster of a movie. If you’ve seen this, do you think gave him one more game? Buy On...
They Cloned Tyrone: Directed by Juel Taylor. With John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, Teyonah Parris, Kiefer Sutherland. A series of eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy in this pulpy mystery caper. There’s a good story here shoved under a Tarantino level of racial vulgarities and stereotypes, both of which can be easily dismissed as the creative team using them to make a point, and if you’re able to do that than you’ll enjoy a perfectly fine film. There’s some pretty interesting story elements at play here, none of which are unique but are...
The Martian: Directed by Ridley Scott. With Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels. An astronaut becomes stranded on Mars after his team assume him dead, and must rely on his ingenuity to find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive and can survive until a potential rescue. I watched something that referenced Mars or had a scene on Mars and for the life of me I cannot remember what series it was, but it gave me the push to rewatch one of the most optimistic Mars movies ever filmed. It’s still a great experience and...
Truth of the Divine The second book in Lindsay Ellis’s well written series of books about cyborg robots that show up on Earth and have some pretty emotional experiences with the humans they bond with. The story drifts around for several of the middle chapters with a character going through some pretty intense psychiatric issues and I found that I really just wanted the story to do more than it ended up doing in this book, but it sets itself up for at least one more entry in the series. I’m hopeful that Sterling will keep the series going, but...
Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken: Directed by Kirk DeMicco, Faryn Pearl. With Jane Fonda, Lana Condor, Toni Collette, Colman Domingo. A shy adolescent learns that she comes from a fabled royal family of legendary sea krakens and that her destiny lies in the depths of the waters, which is bigger than she could have ever imagined. I’m pretty sure I’m not remotely in the target audience for this coming of age adventure, but I still felt like this was a fun movie. My wife felt there was a couple things that completely took her out of the film, the primary one...
