Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) Movie Review

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Wes Ball’s The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes moves the world of the 2010s Apes trilogy multiple generations of apes into the future. Caeser (Andy Serkis) long deceased, the planet of the apes has mostly forgotten his impact on their world. Apes now live in clans, scattered around the ruins of human cities. One gorilla, who has adopted the name Caeser for himself, wants more than a clan. He desires an empire. Proximus Caeser (Kevin Durrand) violently destroys neighboring clans and brings the surviving apes into his kingdom.

This includes the “Eagle Clan” of which young Noa (Owen Teague) is a part. Noa witnesses the death of Continue reading Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

The Fall Guy (2024) Movie Review

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David Leitch’s The Fall Guy is, in many respects, a love letter to the stunt performers that have allowed cinema to function properly for many a decade. At this level, the film definitely excels. Stuntman Colt Seavers’ (Ryan Gosling) opening voiceover monologue keys us in to the philosophy of the stunt performer: they keep everything looking exciting and propulsive, but their job is to be invisible by design. The best stunt performer disappears. Remember this; it will be important later.

Leitch’s comedy-action-romance benefits from the residual effects of the dump-truck of charisma that was Ryan Gosling in Barbie. Fittingly, the film opens the 2024 Summer movie season and promises an Continue reading The Fall Guy (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) Movie Review

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The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare tries hard to be a rag-tag action film with a roguish, rugged charm. Based (however loosely) on the book Churchill’s Secret Warriors by Damien Lewis, about the small group of fighters covertly deployed by the British military during World War II, the film depicts Operation Postmaster. Postmaster was a mission to steal three German cargo ships that provided essential supplies for the Nazi U-boats. As the movie tells it, the U-boats were vital to the German’s control over the Atlantic Ocean, and thus cause for reticence when it came to the United States’ decision to join the War.

The film tries hard, and you can feel it. You can feel the four screenwriters – some possibly brought in simply for punching up the quips – producing the dialogue. You can hear the hope for Continue reading The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Late Night with the Devil (2024) Movie Review

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Since I was a preteen, I have been insomniac off and on. Thus, I spent a good number of nights in my formative years in my parent’s basement flipping through television channels, broadcast and cable. I suppose late night TV, as a result, has something of a hold on me. Not late night in the Jay Leno sense, but in that sense of discovering weird programming that no self-respecting network/station exec would allow to be aired in the daylight. Footage of Anton LaVey on PBS, things of that nature.

Films like Ghostwatch, WNUF Halloween Special, VHYes and the like play into the odd draw of analog media, asking the question of what happens when Continue reading Late Night with the Devil (2024) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Sports

Challengers (2024) Movie Review

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One could describe great dialogue as like a tennis volley. In the case of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers (dialogue provided by writer Justin Kuritzkes), the simile is essentially literalized. For three tennis players of differing star power, tennis is a contentious conversation, and contentious conversation is rarely far removed from talk of tennis. That is to say, as the relationships between Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) grow more knotty, melodramatic, and complex, the thin line that separates on-court competition from romantic interests is hopelessly blurred.

Frankly, describing this central premise which conflates sports competition and competitive romantic endeavors makes the film sound Continue reading Challengers (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) Movie Review

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Somewhere in the midst of the haggard kerfuffle that is the frozen empire of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore tells Dan Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz something to the effect of the old cliché, “we’re getting too old for this.” This does not come across like a self-aware nod toward the inherent redundancy and inessential nature of Hollywood reboot culture. It feels more like the film accidentally self-reporting.

Personally (and fortunately, perhaps), I did not have to get too old before realizing that it is a waste of one’s time and energy to Continue reading Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) Movie Review →

2024 Academy Awards, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

2024 Academy Awards Nominations Reaction: Is Oppenheimer Set for an Oscars Sweep?

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The 2024 Oscar nominations have been announced. Many things played out as expected, with one or two notable omissions (apologies to Margot Robbie) and inclusions (congrats to America Ferrera). The Oscar races, by and large, continue to move toward their likeliest conclusions. But some key nominations (or lack thereof) tip the trajectories of some races in unexpected directions.

Oppenheimer went into nomination morning the current front-runner and the film anticipated to receive the most nominations. It succeeded on that front, scoring 13 noms. With firm aspirations in both above and below the line categories, Christopher Nolan’s Manhattan Project epic is poised to Continue reading 2024 Academy Awards Nominations Reaction: Is Oppenheimer Set for an Oscars Sweep? →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

I.S.S. (2024) Movie Review

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Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s I.S.S. is a low-budget thriller set in the shoebox of a set replicating the International Space Station. The film sets out to be a slow-burn potboiler (despite a 95-minute runtime), where chummy colleagues are thrown into an international geopolitical dispute that sows distrust and paranoia. Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) is greeted warmly by the crew of the space station, who hail equally from Russia and the United States. Her first day working as a biologist on the station ends in a drunken celebration and Kira looking out onto Earth’s surface. Weronika (Maria Mashkova) and Alexey (Pilou Asbæk) joke that Kira doesn’t understand the full weight of seeing the world from the outside, where you can no longer see borders.

The first 15 minutes of I.S.S. (and the last few moments of the film) harp on this obvious bit of foreshadowing: in the Space Station, there are no Continue reading I.S.S. (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Self Reliance (2024) Movie Review

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With Self Reliance, Jake Johnson and The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer) have made a broad comedy rendition of David Fincher’s The Game. After a bad breakup with his partner, an aimless Thomas Walcott (Johnson) jumps at the chance to play a mysterious game of life and death, to be live-streamed to the dark web. The rules are simple: Thomas must survive 30 days of being hunted by assassins from Greenland who may or may not ever find him and who cannot harm him if he is within striking distance of another person. Seeing this last part as an exploitable loophole (more of a rule than a loophole, as it were), Thomas accepts the challenge.

For the first few days, Thomas is golden. He wakes up, lazily rides a recumbent bicycle, has a few shots of whisky at a bar, and calls it a day. No sign of any “production assistant ninjas” ready to film his murder. Then, one night, a window breaks while he is sleeping and he discovers Continue reading Self Reliance (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Book of Clarence (2024) Movie Review

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Jeymes Samuel’s The Harder They Fall was a pleasant surprise and a critical success for Netflix. His follow-up, The Book of Clarence, takes a similarly anachronistic approach to a familiar genre. This time, Samuel takes on the religious epic. The film presents an alternative biblical story adjacent to the story of the last days of Jesus Christ. This apocrypha is simplistic and familiar, so much so that when David Oyelowo’s John the Baptist exposition dumps the premise unnecessarily the plot itself almost feels like a punchline.

Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) and his friend Elijah (RJ Cyler) owe a man known as Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi Abrefa) money that they don’t have. To further complicate things, Clarence is Continue reading The Book of Clarence (2024) Movie Review →

One man. Thousands of movies.