I’m going to be transparent about something up front: I’m going to the mat for The First Purge. Not only do I think it is a passable movie, but I think it is the only good Purge film to date.
The Purge is a franchise whose premise showed so much promise from the beginning. An American political system in which an annual event allows all crime to be legal for one night. It has B-movie schlock written all over it.
Why, then, was The Purge a quaint home invasion movie? Sure, it had the high concept marketing gimmick of people in creepy masks (a concept that has reached pique kitsch by the fourth installment). But otherwise it was no different, narratively, from a Funny Games or a Panic Room (both of which: superior artistic efforts than The Purge).
There are two reviews I can write about Sicario: Day of the Soldado. One compares the drug cartel thrill-drama to its inarguably superior predecessor. The other views it in a vacuum. One of these reviews disparages the film. The other provides a half-hopeful shrug of the shoulders.
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood ran for 33 years, beginning in 1963 and ending in 2001. During that time, Fred Rogers did not revolutionize children’s television—it is safe to say other network producers did not, and have not, caught on to what made his show so pervasive. But he did create something unique: a platform to communicate to children, rather than pander to or exploit them.
Brad Bird’s first contribution to Pixar animation, 2004’s The Incredibles, was a rather prescient film. Using 1960s Silver Age superhero comics as inspiration, The Incredibles foresaw a future of superhero films and cheekily toyed with the tropes before they were firmly established (the modern era of the genre, led by Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and the formation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was a few years away).
It commented on a lack of female representation in the world of caped crusaders. Its plot involved complications around fear and distrust over supers, long before Captain America: Civil War and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. And how many modern silver screen superheros still Continue reading Incredibles 2 (2018) Movie Review→
Tag is a movie about tag. The children’s schoolyard game. It is quite sincerely about this, and nothing else. Based on a real-life Wall Street Journal article, the film follows an annual game of tag played by a group of five grown men.
One is a wealthy businessman (Jon Hamm). One is an unemployed stoner (Jake Johnson). One is so dedicated to the game that he gets employed as a janitor just to instigate a tag (Ed Helms). One is a self-professed paranoid man who also happens to take everything that comes at him with the chill demeanor of a Hannibal Buress (Hannibal Buress).
And one is a fitness guru who has never been tagged in the 30 year history of their game (Jeremy Renner). This year, however, he’s Continue reading Tag (2018) Movie Review→
From moment one of Superfly, the remake of the 1972 blaxploitation film of the same name, there is over-indulgent bombast. Not to demean the song that kicks off the film. Future curates the original music throughout, which is lush and appealing, if not an impossible comparison to Curtis Mayfield’s scoring of the original film (his “Pusherman,” which is one of the best original songs made for a film, gets reprised in this movie).
Music, in fact, might be the strongest aspect of Director X’s vision of enigmatic Atlanta drug pusher Youngblood Prince (Trevor Jackson). It makes sense, given the man’s lengthy history as a music video director.
That also likely explains why the plot of the film begins in a highly-active strip club. This sequence is, more or less, a hip-hop music video. And the rest of the film Continue reading Superfly (2018) Movie Review→
Gary Ross’s Ocean’s 8 is an all-female reboot of the wildly popular Ocean’s trilogy from the 2000s (those films directed by Steven Soderbergh). In the film, Danny Ocean’s sister Deborah (Sandra Bullock) gets paroled from prison after almost six years of detention. During those five plus years, Debbie planned an intricate heist of a $150 million Cartier diamond necklace.
Debbie and her partner (Cate Blanchett) round up a crew of criminal specialists (Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina) to pull off the heist during the Met Gala, where they have arranged Continue reading Ocean’s 8 (2018) Movie Review→
Hotel Artemis, the science fiction crime film set on the backdrop of the rioting streets of 2028 Los Angeles, could be described as clunky. Bloated. Over-loaded. An exploitation action film in the clothing of a classier sheep. A lot of slick talk with little substance.
It is all of these things. And quite blatantly. But Drew Pearce’s film is also a helluva lot of entertainment value stuffed into a 93-minute feature.
Leigh Whannell is a known horror screenwriter, having penned the Insidious films and the first three entries in the Saw franchise. His first directorial effort was Insidious: Chapter Three. (No offense to Leigh, but it is arguably the black sheep chapter of the series).
With Upgrade he has, dare I say, upgraded his ability for genre filmmaking. What remains in this gritty, futuristic action flick is Whannell’s penchant for high energy gore and viscera. What is added is Continue reading Upgrade (2018) Movie Review→
Adrift tells the true story of Tami Oldham (Shailene Woodley), who, while sailing a yacht to San Diego with her boyfriend Richard Sharp (Sam Claflin), gets caught in a storm that leaves the boat in tatters. With a search area too large for anyone to conceivably find the yacht, Tami uses her tact and pure force of will to navigate the boat toward Hawaii, a target small enough that any miscalculation could mean missing landfall and, thus, certain death.
The five minutes of screentime after Woodley’s Tami comes to and takes stock of her situation, where she kicks herself into gear and Jerry-rigs the half-destroyed boat into a functioning machine, is Continue reading Adrift (2018) Movie Review→
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