Tag Archives: Justice Smith

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

I Saw the TV Glow (2024) Movie Review

You suffocate, then you learn how to breathe again.

Jane Schoenbrun’s magnificent I Saw the TV Glow is a suburban-set semi-hallucinatory, semi-body horror piece of magical realism. Yet the film feels definitively lucid, articulating with striking poise a story about fluid identity and the repressive external forces that work to render that fluidity categorical. It is also a film whose body horror elements (which are quite minimal to the eyes of a frequent horror viewer) should not scare away the squeamish. Indeed, much of the horror regarding the body involves deeply conflicted and isolating internal states, as opposed to buckets of blood.

As for the magical realism, it is the icing on this hazy, flickering cake. Aided by an effectively moody soundtrack and some evocative imagery, Schoenbrun produces a film that feels Continue reading I Saw the TV Glow (2024) Movie Review →

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

Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (2019) Movie Review

Pokemon is one of the biggest video game brands in history. As of 2017, it was the third best selling video game franchise in the history of the medium, behind Mario and Tetris. Its first generation of games, manufactured in 1996 for the Nintendo handheld console, the Game Boy, sold over 45,000,000 units.

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The franchise quickly ballooned into a trans-media synergy that encompassed animated television shows, animated movies, trading cards, toys, and more video game installments. In a sense, it is a surprise that it has taken this long for The Pokemon Company to pull the trigger on a live-action film of its titular product.

Then again, there was the Super Mario Bros. movie.

The stigma against video game adaptations to film is Continue reading Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (2019) Movie Review →

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

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) Movie Review

“Why is anyone doing anything in this movie?”

I scrawled this note—thin and chicken scratched—in my notebook about an hour into J.A. Bayona’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the sequel to Colin Trevorrow’s smash-hit 2015 film Jurassic World (itself being a soft reboot of the Jurassic Park franchise envisioned by Steven Spielberg).

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Now, I only quote myself (at the risk of immediately coming off pedantic) in order to correct myself. It isn’t that the characters in Fallen Kingdom lack motivation. But I found myself Continue reading Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) Movie Review →