Tag Archives: movie review

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, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

Series 7: The Contenders (2001) is an Underseen Gem — Psychotronic Cinema

This is installment six in our “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?).

There exists a veritable subgenre of horror-thrillers (truly, there are dozens and dozens of these things) where the premise involves some form of gamified scenario centering around torturous or otherwise deadly scenarios. The trend blew up following the massive success of the Saw franchise (a franchise also responsible for popularizing the torture porn film), but it did not begin here. It also saw a recent unlikely revival with the surprise success of Squid Game in 2021.

Series 7: The Contenders is something like a working class, non-science fiction Running Man. Or a non-science fiction The Hunger Games, years before those books were published. It is murder codified into Continue reading Series 7: The Contenders (2001) is an Underseen Gem — Psychotronic Cinema →

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 →

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

Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre (2023) Movie Review

Guy Ritchie has spent the most recent stretch of his career making passable yet somewhat anonymous and, frankly, lacking action pictures. Following the bungled Aladdin live action film for Disney, which I don’t think was necessarily Ritchie’s fault (he wasn’t the right choice for the material to begin with), he has been trying to get back to the brand of film that made him a name in the first place.

The Gentlemen was fine but not my bag. Wrath of Man has some nice sequences but is repetitive and drab. This time out, Ritchie goes for a sprawling, international espionage thriller — he’s trying for a James Bond or Mission: Impossible vibe.

The film opens with your standard issue “gathering up the usual suspects” routine. Two government bureaucrats (Cary Elwes and Eddie Marsan) discuss the crew for their next important job — something involving Continue reading Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre (2023) Movie Review →

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

Cocaine Bear (2023) Movie Review

Cocaine Bear is the type of movie that “works well in the room,” so to speak. The pitch to Universal on this probably went over like gangbusters. It’s a fun premise with an undeniably eye-catching title, and a film that could be marketed to a college crowd during a slow box office weekend. It is a movie about a bear that does cocaine and wreaks havoc on a forest full of people. That’s not the most difficult movie to find an audience for. And judging solely on one theater in a small market during the film’s Thursday night preview screening, it looks like it did in fact reach that audience.

I saw two movies on this Thursday. One was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in its second weekend; the other was Cocaine Bear. Ant-Man, a huge release with a massive budget that is part of one of the most profitable franchises of all time, was attended by me and two others. Cocaine Bear, meanwhile, was Continue reading Cocaine Bear (2023) Movie Review →

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

Act of Violence upon a Young Journalist (1988) is a Cult Film You’ve Never Heard Of

This is installment five in our “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?)

Act of Violence upon a Young Journalist is a cult film object from Uruguay, but it is relatively unknown in the U.S. It circulated in some film circles in South America, seemingly years after its original direct-to-video release in 1988. A documentary was made a couple years ago, called Straight to VHS (directed by Emilio Silva Torres), that documented the strange absence of the film’s director, Manuel Lamas, from public life, which has rendered details on the film’s production and its release scant.

The doc is good, although I don’t think it answers as many questions as it asks. What makes the doc and its distribution important is that Continue reading Act of Violence upon a Young Journalist (1988) is a Cult Film You’ve Never Heard Of →

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

Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is a Psychotronic Film — Review

This is the fourth installment in our “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?)

More than anything else, I am reviewing Koyaanisqatsi because it delights me that it (and the second in the trilogy, Powaqqatsi) are in The Psychotronic Video Guide. It is such an odd addition, and it makes me wonder what about it is, in fact, “psychotronic.” The film is not generically of a piece with other psychotronic film (although, as I’ve mentioned before this term encompasses quite a breadth of genres), and its non-narrative documentary style hews it closer to the arthouse than to the late-night cable time slot.

Perhaps its music and rhythmic sense of movement lends itself to a certain, let’s say, chilled out demographic.

Michael Weldon (originator of the term “psychotronic”) writes that the style and score of Koyaanisqatsi was influential culturally, especially in television commercials. This could point us to a tension that presents as psychotronic. If psychotronia’s guiding principle is Continue reading Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is a Psychotronic Film — Review →