Tag Archives: 2023

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

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Review: Shin Kamen Rider

Shin Kamen Rider is playing as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.

During the rapid-fire in media res opening of Hideaki Anno’s Shin Kamen Rider, memories were conjured of the Power Rangers shows of my youth. People dressed in bulky-headed costumes chase each other down and then prepare to battle in clunky hand-to-hand combat. It was not a second after the film reminded me of that quaint franchise that the masked hero of the title started popping the heads of attacking grunts like ticks and cracking into their ribcages like one cracks an ice tray. Pulpy blood splattering on the nearby trees.

Then, we witness motorcyclist turned cyborg grasshopper Takeshi (Sosuke Ikematsu) as he experiences a severe panic attack brought on by the murders he just committed.

Takeshi has been engineered into something of a superhuman by an organization named S.H.O.C.K.E.R. While wearing a metallic helmet shaped like the head of a grasshopper and running a machine on his body that looks like a computer cooling fan, he can harness the power of Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Review: Shin Kamen Rider →

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

Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Blackout, Stay Online and Vincent Must Die

Blackout, Stay Online, and Vincent Must Die are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.

Stay Online

Eva Strelinkova’s Stay Online is a Screenlife film that follows Katya (Yelyzaveta Zaitseva), a woman who is Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Blackout, Stay Online and Vincent Must Die →

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

Sympathy for the Devil (2023) Movie Review

Yuval Adler’s Sympathy for the Devil owes a great debt to Collateral. Michael Mann’s masterpiece bottles tension inside the cramped confines of a Los Angeles taxi cab. Devil substitutes Las Vegas for L.A. and the car of a man desperately trying to reach his wife giving birth in the hospital for a taxi driver. It also substitutes Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise with Joel Kinnaman and Nicolas Cage.

Kinnaman takes on a similar—though less expressive and emotionally palpable—disposition to Foxx. Cage, on the other hand, replaces the icy composure of Cruise with his usual Continue reading Sympathy for the Devil (2023) Movie Review →

Lists

Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 Lineup Preview

As an amateur critic (who conjures a perception of credibility by the skin of his teeth like a snake oil salesman trucking across the unpaved west), I like to break down the calendar year by what it offers in terms of film. Summer comes with blockbuster season (more emphasis on the “busts” this year), but it also comes with genre fest season. In truth, there is very little reason to codify July through (roughly) October as the time for genre film festivals. Genre festivals run all over the world all throughout the year. But some of the most prominent fests fall in that stretch between Cannes and the lead-in to awards season. FrightFest, Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest.

And the festival that kicks off this arbitrarily defined season is the Fantasia International Film Festival. Taking place in Montreal from July 20 to August 9, this year’s 27th edition of the fest features new, cutting edge genre films from across the globe, as well as a quality selection of older films. Here are, in no particular order, seven films from the program worth keeping an eye on.

Suitable Flesh

Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh, a Lovecraft adaptation starring Heather Graham and Barbara Crampton, appears satisfyingly Continue reading Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 Lineup Preview →

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

The Flash (2023) Movie Review

2023 is shaping up to be the year that giant Hollywood franchises try to tell us that they are too sprawling and layered and beholden to their fanbases for their own good. It’s like they are crying out for help.

Between Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse declaring the canon to be an existential threat to multiversal stability and The Flash gaudily colliding planets worth of continuity against one another (both examples are literal at the textual level), both Marvel and DC film properties can’t help but be gasping for breath under the massive weight of unbearable, multi-dimensional lore-making.

And yet, both Marvel and DC want to have their cakes and eat them, too, as they make laborious nods to the unwieldy Gordian knots of their own creation while also reveling in the synergistic team-ups and nesting doll-like allusions that made both franchises box office draws in the first place.

If it sounds like I’m being overly cynical, let me assure you I am Continue reading The Flash (2023) Movie Review →

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

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) Movie Review

Before the release of this new Guardians of the Galaxy installment, I felt like Marvel had zombified me. Since the studio’s massive saga-ender Avengers: Endgame, I have continued going to the theater to see each new entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. None of these films have moved me in any sort of way. I simply show up, sit numb in the dirty theater seat, and then leave the film without any strong emotions whatsoever. Even Spider-Man: No Way Home, a film many enjoyed, left me strikingly cold. I simply no longer care about this multi-franchise empire.

However, something about James Gunn’s take on the Guardians works on me in a different way. Where Marvel’s phase four (are we on four? five?) felt like a series of films introducing or re-introducing characters without a meaningful sense of Continue reading Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) Movie Review →

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

BlackBerry (2023) Movie Review

Sandwiched between the releases of two massive Summer blockbusters, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 and Fast X, were a meager selection of smaller films. There’s the hypnosis crime thriller from Robert Rodriguez starring Ben Affleck. There’s the sequel to the quiet, soft hit Book Club. There’s also Sony’s shabby looking live-action anime adaptation Knights of the Zodiac.

Then, there’s BlackBerry. If any of these small and mid-budget movies are worth your time, it is BlackBerry. A tech entrepreneur biopic in the style of a classical tragedy, Matt Johnson’s film charts the rise and fall of Research in Motion (RIM), the startup that developed the BlackBerry. In particular, it zooms in on Continue reading BlackBerry (2023) Movie Review →

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

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) Movie Review

My relationship with the John Wick films has been a turbulent one. My review for John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum revised my review of John Wick: Chapter Two. In re-watching the films in preparation for this new, epic-length chapter, I found my fondness for the first film waning. There is enjoyment to be had in all three films, and the stunt work in the first film was arguably a wake-up call to the rest of Hollywood to step up their action movie product.

But I have also found myself increasingly exhausted by the prolonged action sequences, flurries of bullets, and metric ton of broken glass. I had to question, then, what my response to an almost three-hour long fourth film in this franchise might be. My expectations were in flux. Parabellum is Continue reading John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) Movie Review →

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

Scream VI (2023) Movie Review

Scream VI, as one of the film’s own characters tells us, is a “requel sequel” — i.e., a sequel to a franchise reboot which also follows some, if not all, of the continuity of the original film(s). We have been seeing many of these in the horror genre lately (and we are scheduled to see even more), so this is good territory for a “requel sequel” of Hollywood’s favorite meta-horror franchise to interrogate. Unfortunately, this interrogation falls flats.

This film picks up where the last one left off, with the two surviving sisters of the last Woodsboro murder spree, Tara and Sam Carpenter (Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera), relocating to Continue reading Scream VI (2023) Movie Review →

2023 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2023 Academy Awards Predictions — Final Ballot

The Golden Globes are passed. The guild awards have happened. The Indie Spirits are now spirited away. The Oscars are one week away. It’s time to talk Oscar ballots.

We’ve already covered each Oscar category with more words than you’ll see here. But some variables have changed since then. And as much as I am one to tinker with these sorts of things until the very last minute, it’s time to commit in digital ink the site’s final predictions. Hopefully nothing unforeseen happens in the next six days.

Best Picture

  • All Quiet on the Western Front – Malte Grunert
  • Avatar: The Way of Water – James Cameron, Jon Landau
  • The Banshees of Inisherin – Graham Broadbent, Peter Czerin, Martin McDonagh
  • Elvis – Baz Luhrmann, Catherine Martin, Gail Berman, Patrick McCormick, Schuyler Weiss
  • Everything Everywhere All at Once – Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Jonathan Wang
  • The Fabelman – Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner
  • Tár – Todd Field, Alexandra Milchan, Scott Lambert
  • Top Gun: Maverick – Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison, Jerry Bruckheimer
  • Triangle of Sadness – Erik Hemmendorff, Philippe Bober
  • Women Talking – Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner, Frances McDormand

Will Win: Continue reading 2023 Academy Awards Predictions — Final Ballot →