Tag Archives: 2023

2023 Academy Awards, All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Short Films

2023 Oscars Best Animated Short Film Reviews: My Year of Dicks, Ice Merchants, The Flying Sailor

With the Academy Award nominations releasing earlier today, it is ample time for me to play some catch-up. As always, there are 15 short films nominated across three categories, and it is inevitable that people will look at these titles and squint a little. These films hardly receive any buzz, particularly compared to the heavy hitter feature contenders, and they usually end up getting short shrift as a result.

Often enough, though, there are more than a few short films that make the grade and which are Continue reading 2023 Oscars Best Animated Short Film Reviews: My Year of Dicks, Ice Merchants, The Flying Sailor →

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

Sick (2023) Movie Review

John Hyam’s Sick does one thing; thankfully, it does that thing pretty well.

Hyam’s previous film, Alone, was a similarly straightforward piece of genre formalism. Both films share the same singular goal: shoot people in peril. Unlike Alone, Sick comes with horror genre royalty in its byline. Kevin Williamson’s first feature screenplay since Scream 4, Sick is a cabin in the woods style slasher in the time of Covid. It is April 2020, and two college students (Gideon Adlon and Bethlehem Million) decide to quarantine together at a fancy, isolated cabin. And, as anyone who’s seen a horror film will already be well aware, no one is truly alone in an isolated cabin at night.

The first hour of this 84-minute film consists almost entirely of young people being stalked violently by an anonymous, knife-wielding killer. Unlike the other Williamson property this brings to mind, though, Sick is Continue reading Sick (2023) Movie Review →

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

M3GAN (2023) Movie Review

Nothing says kicking off a new year at the movies quite like an AI-driven robot toy singing a haunting lullaby rendition of a Sia song a few hours after said robot violently attacks a mopey child bully.

Before the pandemic caused the movie industry to throw out the playbook on theatrical releases, January was a month notorious for its low-quality new releases. Traditionally, January fare includes Continue reading M3GAN (2023) Movie Review →

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

The Whale (2022) Movie Review

Darren Aronofsky is no stranger to provocative and difficult cinema. He has made a career of it. From the bleak downward spirals in Requiem for a Dram to the chaos of the frustratingly opaque mother!, the filmmaker likes to experiment with morbid, carnivalesque subject matter. Often, this experimentation involves the torment of the film’s characters.

With The Whale, it should be said, Aronofsky and writer Samuel D. Hunter aim to inflect Charlie’s (Brendan Fraser) torment with a profound empathy. But this is also where Continue reading The Whale (2022) Movie Review →