Category Archives: Long Reviews (>400 Words)

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

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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 →

Box Office Predictions, Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Summer 2024 Box Office Predictions

Leave a comment

Update (4/27/24): Following publication of this article, Sony announced it would be pushing the release of Kraven the Hunter to December 2024, moving it out of the summer box office conversation. Turns out I, in fact, did mention this film more times than I needed to.

We are about to enter a bleak summer for theatrical cinema. For several reasons – chief among them the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of last year causing delays – 2024 has less to offer than previous years when it comes to big budget blockbuster tentpoles. Even with first quarter offerings like Dune: Part Two, Ghostbuster: Frozen Empire, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (between the three, Hollywood may be tipping a tad too imperial), the box office is lagging behind 20% compared to the numbers from this time last year. Deadline reports a projected $1 billion drop in box office by year’s end.

The summer will likely be where this deficit is felt the hardest. Whereas most May months of recent years (pandemic year 2020 notwithstanding) have begun with Continue reading Summer 2024 Box Office Predictions →

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

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) Movie Review

Leave a comment

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 →

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

Civil War (2024) Movie Review

Leave a comment

Alex Garland’s previous film, Men (2022), was provocative, but it provoked one’s attention for the sake of a statement without much depth to it. Civil War, the filmmaker’s latest, is marketed and branded as a highly provocative sign-of-the-times political thriller. It wants on the one hand to be an eerie premonition of where the United States Democracy is heading as the country trudges through yet another contentious election year. But it is, in execution, far less provocative than it hopes to be, despite claiming to have a deeply resonant statement to make.

If Civil War is on the one hand an aspiring premonition, it is on the other a Continue reading Civil War (2024) Movie Review →

2024 Academy Awards, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

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

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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 →