Category Archives: Long Reviews (>400 Words)

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

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) Movie Review

People come to the movie theater to see spectacle. To see what demands to be seen on the large screen. This is one ideology, at least.

Director Luc Besson enjoys his spectacle. With $200 million dollars at his disposable, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is what comes of this affection for the visually bombastic.

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The film stars Dane DeHaan as the titular Major Valerian, a government soldier at Alpha, the space station galaxy encompassing 1,000 different planets. Although he plays the title role, however, DeHaan is eclipsed in screentime by Cara Delevigne, who plays Continue reading Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, F Movies, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Wish Upon (2017) Movie Review

In Wish Upon, endlessly picked-on teenager Clare (Joey King) is gifted a music box with Ancient Chinese lettering on it that her dad (Ryan Phillipe) found in a dumpster. The box allows her seven wishes, at the cost of seven lives.

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And it is not good. Continue reading Wish Upon (2017) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) Movie Review

Do you ever stop to think that 20, 30, 40 years from now the computer effects work that we herald in today’s cinema will look dated and unfortunate, as we may look back now on science fiction CG from decades past?

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At the onset of War for the Planet of the Apes, I thought of this briefly. I studied the edges of our simian compadres against the lush nature backdrops. Wondered if Winter (Aleks Paunovic) might stand out as too artificial given his albino coloring.

Then I dropped that thought. Even if somehow animators and effects artists master that Continue reading War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) Movie Review →

A Movies, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It, Romance

The Big Sick (2017) Movie Review

In The Big Sick, comedian Kumail Nanjiani plays comedian Kumail Nanjiani. He works the Chicago comedy club scene despite his parents’ wishes for him to become a lawyer or a doctor. Kumail has his own path to follow, differing with his parents’ Pakistani cultural beliefs on arranged marriages and Muslim prayer practices.

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However, he still lies to them in order to keep them happy, knowing that the possibility of being disowned from the family is all too real if he chooses to Continue reading The Big Sick (2017) Movie Review →

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

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) Movie Review

2002. B-Movie horror crowd-pleaser Sam Raimi brings the iconic friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to the big screen.

2012. Following two Raimi Spider-Man sequels—one to great acclaim and one ill-fated—Sony revamps their comic book property with Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man.

2015. It becomes public knowledge that Sony and Marvel Studios reached an agreement to bring the red spandex, arachnid-based superhero into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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Now, 15 years after his first big screen appearance, Spider-Man (Tom Holland, in this instance) makes Continue reading Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) Movie Review →

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

2:22 (2017) Movie Review

Dylan (Michiel Huisman) likes the stability of life. He sees patterns in everything. It fits perfectly with his air traffic control gig, even when he almost kills 900 people in a nearly botched landing.

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On this plane is his new love interest Sarah (Teresa Palmer). They meet at the hilariously-named air ballet “Beginnings,” in which they Continue reading 2:22 (2017) Movie Review →

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

The Beguiled (2017) Movie Review

In a wooded hideaway in Virginia is a school for girls led by Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman). Three years deep into the Civil War, Confederate patrols make their way through the area frequently, but Martha and the girls also lie in fear of potential Yankee parties. They whisper stories of Union soldiers raping Southern women, painting uncivilized pictures of the unseen army.

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It is understandable, then, that the inhabitants of the plantation take to wounded soldier Cpl. John McBurney (Colin Farrell) with Continue reading The Beguiled (2017) Movie Review →

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

The House (2017) Movie Review

Scott (Will Ferrell) and Kate (Amy Poehler) Johansen need money for their daughter’s (Ryan Simpkins) college tuition. The city council-sponsored scholarship she was supposed to earn was pulled due to budget cuts. Scott and Kate fail to get raises at their respective workplaces.

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Then there’s Frank (Jason Mantzoukas), the gambling and internet porn addict best friend of Scott whose wife has left him. In shambles, all Frank wants is to Continue reading The House (2017) Movie Review →

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

Baby Driver (2017) Movie Review

Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a getaway driver. He works under Kevin Spacey’s Doc, a heist mastermind who never works with the same crew twice but who considers Baby his lucky charm. A lucky charm that he has under his thumb thanks to a juvenile mistake that Baby pulled on him at a young age.

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Baby is the eccentric protagonist and your archetypal “mysterious quiet type” character. After an accident left him both orphaned and ailed by tinnitus, Baby lives Continue reading Baby Driver (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Western

The Bad Batch (2017) Movie Review

Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut as a feature director came in the form of the genre-bending vampire romance film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. The film, shot in supple black and white over a soundtrack of trance-inducing electronica and angsty punk, was a beautiful piece about maintaining relationships in an environment rife with isolation.

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On paper, Amirpour’s second film The Bad Batch exists in a similar world. Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) is released from “Bad Batch” prison into the desert wilderness of the Texas-Mexico border.

A dystopian world in which cannibalism is a viable form of survivable (viable to the point of being morally questionable as opposed to morally intolerable), isolation is all Arlen has. Especially after she is captured by a family of cannibals and Continue reading The Bad Batch (2017) Movie Review →