Peppermint is essentially the same film as Eli Roth’s remake of Death Wish from earlier this year, only slightly less visually flat and generally more interesting. But don’t misunderstand. Peppermint is not a great movie. It is merely better than one of the most lackluster action films of the year.
Jennifer Garner stars as Riley North, whose life takes a drastic turn after the gang members who killed her husband and daughter Continue reading Peppermint (2018) Movie Review
The Nun is the latest entry into the The Conjuring franchise. After a standout appearance in The Conjuring 2, the eponymous demon nun (Bonnie Aarons) is given the standalone treatment. In this iteration, it is Romania in 1952. In the catacombs beneath a rural convent, two nuns approach a door sealed with a wooden beam. Carved in that lock, in Latin, are the words “God ends here.”
On the other side of the door…
Is an evil nun. Can’t imagine it’s a spoiler to mention that.
This cold open, aside from not making a ton of sense given the demon nun Valak’s end goal, establishes the foggy, gloomy atmosphere of the film. One of the nuns, as she runs from Valak, Continue reading The Nun (2018) Movie Review
David Kim (John Cho) has had a rough few years. Following his wife’s death to cancer, he has grown distant from his daughter Margot (Michelle La). So much so that he doesn’t think to worry when she’s been out of the house for over 24 hours. The worry sets in, though, when she stops responding to his texts and calls.
When he finally reports her missing, it becomes evident just how much he cares for her. He becomes the de facto leader of the investigation into her disappearance, using Continue reading Searching (2018) Movie Review
Kin may secretly be the most infuriating movie of the Summer.
It starts out innocuous enough: a stereotypical depiction of Detroit, in which everyone we see is either struggling financially or making ends meet through crime. Eli Solinski (Myles Truitt) is suspended from school after a fight and spends his days doing chores for his adopted father (Dennis Quaid). His brother Jimmy (Jack Reynor) is en route, just out of prison.
Jimmy is the root of all of the family’s problems, it seems. He owes money to the people that offered him protection in prison. When Taylor (James Franco) catches wind that Jimmy may not have the $60 thousand required, he Continue reading Kin (2018) Movie Review
“When you complete a puzzle, you know that you have made all of the right choices.” These words are delivered by Irrfan Khan’s puzzle-making champion Robert. Life, on the other hand, is not as clear cut as a freshly finished puzzle.
Thus is the crux of Puzzle, the Marc Turtletaub-directed adaptation of Natalia Smirnoff’s 2009 film Rompecabezas. And it really does rely on Continue reading Puzzle (2018) Movie Review
It is 1977. Croydon, London. Enn (Alex Sharp) and his two punk friends sneak into a club and subsequently search for the after party they weren’t invited to. Instead, they stumble upon a much different party. A much stranger party. Men and women, clad in leather suits that accent their genitals, mill about. People in blue body suits dance robotically. People in yellow body suits enjoy their individuality and physical form.
It’s all a bit, dare I say, alien.
It isn’t hard to put that together when Enn falls in with one of the yellow-suited lot. Zan (Elle Fanning) makes reference again and again to Continue reading How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2018) Movie Review
Following the Holocaust and the Nuremberg trials, many surviving Nazis fled Europe. They went into hiding or sometimes found support from similar-minded governments. Chris Weitz’ Operation Finale begins with the Mossad during the 1950s. Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac) knocks on a door in Hungary, sending the family inside in a frenzy. They hide Nazi reading material, but Malkin and his cohorts already know who they have caught.
At least, they think they do. They know for certain that the patriarch of the house is a former Nazi soldier. Whether that man is actually on their “list” is questionable, but they kill him anyway.
Malkin has hesitations about Continue reading Operation Finale (2018) Movie Review
Imagine an intellectual property for children re-purposed for adults but written for the sensibilities of a child. In a nutshell, that is The Happytime Murders, the hard-R reskin of the Jim Henson muppet IP. The film is not created by children—it is directed by Henson’s son Brian and written by indie filmmaker Todd Berger—but you wouldn’t know it from the scripted jokes.
The film follows a disgraced Los Angeles cop, Phil Philips (Bill Barretta), who now serves as a disgruntled P.I. He does, in one lengthy scene, spew silly string from Continue reading The Happytime Murders (2018) Movie Review
The first 20 minutes of Mile 22 has a promising setup. The cold open is an efficient and tight action sequence, in which James Silva (Mark Wahlberg) and his skeleton crew of ghost mercenaries breach the isolated home of bomb-building terrorists. It is not the most elegantly-staged of set pieces, but it does the job in relating to us the characters that we will be following for the next 90 minutes.
Following the cold open, we move to an undefined East Asian country, where Silva and his team are working on an errant police officer, Li Noor (Iko Uwais). Li arrives at the U.S. embassy with an encrypted hard drive. Once detained, the hard drive immediately begins deconstructing itself, a ticking clock that gives Silva a limited time before Continue reading Mile 22 (2018) Movie Review
Most of the media attention surrounding the release of Crazy Rich Asians addresses the rarity for a major Hollywood studio release to feature a predominantly Asian cast. This certainly marks a positive moment for representation in Hollywood, and the film presents a bunch of bankable acting talent that Hollywood could be utilizing more often.
Crazy Rich Asians might not live up to the expectations of its outspoken buzz—a film doesn’t need to be a masterpiece to feature positive representation—but it does provide Continue reading Crazy Rich Asians (2018) Movie Review
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