Tag Archives: 2024

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

The Final Destination (2009) Movie Review

Our retrospective of the Final Destination series has reached its most confusingly-titled entry, The Final Destination. This is the fourth installment in the franchise. This was an odd era in Hollywood where studios occasionally got scared of sequels with numbers attached to them, so they simply dropped the number. Fast & Furious (the fourth one) came out the same year as The Final Destination (the fourth one), same with Terminator: Salvation (the fourth one). There’s also Rambo in 2008 (the fourth one). Some real tetraphobia going on here. See also: Rocky Balboa in 2006 (the sixth one), Saw 3D in 2010 (the seventh one).

It reminds me of the 2020s trend of studios splitting long blockbusters into two parts, numbering each part, then getting skittish and frantically renaming them. I think the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One thing directly impacted the film’s box office performance.

Immediately, The Final Destination sets itself apart from previous entries by (1) piping in some certified dad rock with Shinedown’s “Devour,” and (2) abandoning all sense of Continue reading The Final Destination (2009) Movie Review →

2025 Academy Awards, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

2025 Academy Award Predictions — My Oscar Ballot

In previous years, I have taken the time to break down every Oscar race, assess each nominee’s odds, and ultimately give a prediction in each category. This year, time is short, so here we are. Last second predictions.

Here is one film critic’s ballot of Oscar predictions, full of hedged bets, personal opinions, the occasional bold swing, and pauses for halfhearted explanation.

Best Picture

Will Win: Anora
Could Win: The Brutalist
Biased Opinion: The Substance or Nickel Boys should win

I mulled over the possibilities of Continue reading 2025 Academy Award Predictions — My Oscar Ballot →

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

Captain America: Brave New World (2025) Movie Review

I’d be lying if I told you that I was a Marvel fan. I’d be lying if I told you that I have held even an iota of anticipation for the last phase of Marvel films (I didn’t even watch The Marvels). That said, I can’t clearly see how a Marvel fan would get much of satisfaction out of the MCU’s latest outing, Captain America: Brave New World. Unless you are a die-hard stan for fictional metals from the Marvel universe, even the easter eggs in this are going to come off as sub-par.

Marvel appears to be hoping that the back-half of their 2025 slate – made up of Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps – will drum up some sort of resurgence for the MCU. These films also serve as the bridge between Marvel’s fifth and sixth phases, meaning that Continue reading Captain America: Brave New World (2025) Movie Review →

2025 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Surprises from the 2025 Oscar Nominations

Spoiler alert: There aren’t many.

The 2025 Academy Awards nominations have been announced, officially solidifying the Oscar campaigns of a number of awards hopefuls.

Many of the films nominated were the ones prognosticators were expecting. Truly, the most shocked I was watching Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott announce the nominees was seeing the Elton John song get a Best Original Song nomination. Even with this, after thinking about it for a moment, it made reasonable sense as a nomination.

As much as we can talk about surprises, these are the snubs and unexpected noms from this morning’s announcement.

Best Picture Snubs

Given the Academy’s recent track record of nominating a buzzy non-American production in Best Picture (this year there are two), it is not a total shock to see Continue reading Surprises from the 2025 Oscar Nominations →

Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The 10 Best Movies of 2024

Out goes one year; in comes the next. A steady temporal turnstile incessantly reminding us that while we may slow down, the astronomical structures dictating our cultural conception of time are rigid enough as to appear as a constant. In other words, my eyes need a rest.

In other other words, it is best-of-the-year time for all matters cultural discourse. There really is little value to it, this arbitrary comparison between pieces of media based on a calendar release date (usually region-specific, to make it all the less comprehensive). The numbers mean virtually nothing. The voices speaking are minuscule, as they beat the drum for individual and subjective tastes but under the guise of a universal acceptance that these here cultural objects are worth categorizing and hierarchizing into list-like structures for other people’s amusement (and, often, a confirmation of those other people’s own individual and subjective tastes).

In short, I am one iota of cultural detritus contributing to this “online discourse” problem, fueling factional groupthink under some self-prescribed claim to expertise. Or I just feel like Continue reading The 10 Best Movies of 2024 →

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

A Complete Unknown (2024) Movie Review

No matter how you want to trace the lineage of the music biopic, we don’t arrive at a formula-to-an-absolute-fault film like Bohemian Rhapsody without first traveling through James Mangold’s Walk the Line. To see Johnny Cash resurface in Mangold’s return to the genre (now played by a perpetually suave Boyd Holbrook) is like witnessing a poltergeist haunting another film. Or a demon that somehow escaped total exorcism from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a superior take down of the music biopic and a film that remains culturally relevant so long as Hollywood continues churning out mediocre celebrations of celebrity.

Walk the Line was a crossover success, breaking $100 million at the box office, garnering generally positive reviews, and earning a number of accolades including an Oscar for Reese Witherspoon. A Complete Unknown is angling to do the same. The problem (perhaps) is that Continue reading A Complete Unknown (2024) Movie Review →

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

Carry-On (2024) Movie Review

Carry-On is the dumb-as-rocks holiday crowd pleaser of the year, and many involved in its execution are game for embracing the buffoonery.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra had graduated from low-budget horror and slick low-budget action films to the Hollywood studio big leagues. To be clear, this graduation implies only an elevation in budgetary cushion, as his films for Disney and Warners — Jungle Cruise and Black Adam respectively — gave up propulsive energy for glossy studio sheen. Jungle Cruise is mildly entertaining and pleasant enough, for what it’s worth. But it feels like a lazy river compared to even the lowliest of Liam Neeson thriller. And Black Adam…well, we saw how that turned out.

In returning to the high concept action-thriller in the vein of the airport novel, but doing so under the Netflix banner, Collet-Serra scales back from the Continue reading Carry-On (2024) Movie Review →

Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The 10 Worst Movies of 2024

Every year, I waffle in my decision to publish a worst-of year end list or to abstain. In most instances, it is an empty exercise to contribute to the ongoing discussion over the churn and lack of creativity in the media industries, and in Hollywood in particular.

On the other hand, negativity is not only the Internet’s main reason for being; it can also be productive. With each passing year in which franchises continue to circle the box office drain, celebrities fluff themselves up in vanity projects, and cheap cash grabs slip under the cultural radar, it feels more useful to mock than to ignore. In short, standards are necessary. And the bar doesn’t have to be high, either. Something always slips under like a world class limbo competitor.

These are 10 of those films which didn’t make the grade in 2024.

10. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Despite minor improvements over the previous installment, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire proves that nostalgia-driven intellectual property maintenance has a ceiling so low that Continue reading The 10 Worst Movies of 2024 →

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

Screamfest 2024 Movie Reviews

The Screamfest Horror Film Festival recently wrapped up its 24th annual edition at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Here are reviews of a selection of the program’s films.

Antropophagus Legacy

Dario Germani’s Antropophagus Legacy is, perhaps, a continuation of his 2022 film Antropophagus II, itself a sequel (if only in name) to the 1980 cult cannibal film Antropophagus.

This flesh-eating entry follows Hanna (Valentina Corti), who we meet recovering in a hospital bed after her husband’s death (which she is promptly accused of). It is revealed to Hanna by a nurse that Continue reading Screamfest 2024 Movie Reviews →

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

Terrifier 3 (2024) Movie Review

I do not own, let alone clutch at, pearls. When done right, bad taste is the best taste.

The problem with Terrifier 3, the latest in the hyper-violent splatter/slasher franchise from Damien Leone, is not the gore. Don’t get me wrong, the warning should be clear: the faint of heart ought to steer clear of this one. The squishy, bloody, extreme to the limits of extreme violence is not what makes the Terrifier films objectionable; no, that is the main draw. It is the reason why a niche audience propelled the third entry to the number one spot at the domestic box office.

The gore of it all is just fine. In fact, it seems integral to Leone’s macabre vision of the modern slasher. Some would argue that the extremes of Continue reading Terrifier 3 (2024) Movie Review →