There is a scene midway through Annihilation, the latest science fiction expedition from Ex Machina writer-director Alex Garland, where a woman gets yanked off of the ground and rag-dolled by what appears to be a half-bear, half-warthog creature. It’s all right, though. We already knew this was coming.
The woman is one of five tasked with venturing into the “Shimmer,” an enclosed, alien space that crash landed on Earth near a lighthouse and began slowly expanding. Inside the Shimmer, the Continue reading Annihilation (2018) Movie Review→
Annie (Rachel McAdams) and Max (Jason Bateman) have a relationship that was founded on the competition of game night. They first meet at a bar trivia night. Max proposes during a game of charades. Years later, they continue the tradition of a weekly game night with their friends (Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, and Billy Magnussen).
The only issue on this particular weekend is that Max’s upstaging big brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) is in town and ready to blow Max’s game night out of the water. Brooks plans a game night at his luxurious home that he claims will be unlike any other. He’s not wrong, but even he does not foresee what is about to happen.
Game Night is a broad comedy with a sprawling plot that sends this small band of characters across the city, pitting them, at first unbeknownst to them, in Continue reading Game Night (2018) Movie Review→
In Black Panther, T’Challa (Chadewick Boseman) takes his rightful place on the throne as the king of Wakanda, following the death of his father during the events of Captain America: Civil War. However, some people, particularly a man by the name of Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), seeks to challenge this crowning.
Clint Eastwood’s latest, The 15:17 to Paris, tells the true story of three Americans who prevented a potentially disastrous terrorist attack on the eponymous train to Paris in 2015. Not only does Eastwood tell this story, but he casts the three men to play themselves.
Congratulations, everyone. We are now officially living in a post-Fifty Shades world. It’s over. We made it.
Listen, the Fifty Shades trilogy has received its guff. We all know what the critical consensus is on these films. Why bother with yet another review of yet another film of this trilogy? Because, at the risk of losing any credibility I may have accrued as a critic, Fifty Shades Freed is the best of the trilogy.
Watu Wote from director Katja Benrath is one of five films nominated for the 2018 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film
Watu Wote is a beautifully-captured film. Shot mostly at night with low-light lighting schemes, the short nevertheless captures the streets of Kenya wonderfully.
The Cloverfield franchise continued its adept surprise-marketing technique during Super Bowl LII. With a brief teaser trailer dropping for The Cloverfield Paradox (once entitled God Particle), the Netflix-acquired film from Bad Robot announced that the film would be coming very soon. Opening up the Netflix app revealed further that the film would be available to stream immediately following the big game.
Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren), owner of the Winchester repeating rifle company, lives in an elaborate, labyrinthine mansion of an estate. “There are almost 100 rooms in the house,” Sarah Snook’s character says early in the film. “It is easy to get lost.”
She says this to doctor Eric Price (Jason Clarke), who is called on to judge the state of Sarah Winchester’s mental health. This is due to concern that other Winchester stock holders have over Sarah’s obsession with the idea that her house is haunted by Continue reading Winchester (2018) Movie Review→
Now, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise has never been the stuff of legends, not like its antagonist-turned-protagonist-turned-antagonist-etcetera, Leatherface. (Well, maybe not protagonist, but it seems like every other sequel wants to make us sympathize with the chainsaw-wielding serial killer). None of the sequels have received positive reception (although I hear the Viggo Mortensen-starring third film is underrated).
Mary and the Witch’s Flower is the first feature film from Studio Ponoc, a company made up of several former creators from the famed Studio Ghibli. It tells a story that is essentially Harry Potter adjacent, in which a young girl named Mary (Ruby Barnhill, in the English-language dub) stumbles upon a special flower, an engraved broomstick, and, ultimately, magical powers.
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