Adam Selvidge's Website Blog
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: Created by Jessica Gao. With Tatiana Maslany, Ginger Gonzaga, Malia Arrayah, Jameela Jamil. Jennifer Walters navigates the complicated life of a single, 30-something attorney who also happens to be a green 6-foot-7-inch superpowered Hulk. If you judge this series on what it set out to do, it did it very well and stuck the landing. I’m not here to judge that though, I’m here to judge the basic premise of the show. In a prefect world, She-hulk could stand on her own story without the meta-meta commentary that’s inherent with the character. I think I would...
See: Created by Steven Knight. With Jason Momoa, Sylvia Hoeks, Hera Hilmar, Christian Camargo. Far in a dystopian future, the human race has lost the sense of sight, and society has had to find new ways to interact, build, hunt, and to survive. All of that is challenged when a set of twins are born with sight. A glorious ending to an amazing series.. That ending unfortunately went about 20 minutes longer than it should have and introduced all sorts of things that I didn’t appreciate, but none the less I still enjoyed the entirety of the series for how...
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...
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,...
Academy Award-winning screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Let It Fall) examines the mythology of the DC Universe in this compelling new graphic novel! Reframing iconic moments of DC history and charting a previously unexplored sociopolitical thread as seen through the… I had expected this to be a comic, but it ended up being a short novel that took on the task of reframing minority characters from DC Comics from their admittedly problematic origins to origins that are just as problematic. I wasn’t a fan of the end result, as neither the writing nor the art really captured me,...
