Tag Archives: movie review

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

Friendship (2025) Movie Review

It has become increasingly common since the COVID-19 pandemic for stories, think pieces, podcast episodes, TikTok clips, studies, surveys, and all manner of media detritus to be made on the current state of adult friendship and an apparent “loneliness epidemic.” Why are people feeling so lonely, more so now than ever before?

Despite how it’s been characterized, this “epidemic” is not a novel phenomenon unique to one generation or isolated to a “post-pandemic” moment in time. It’s a decades old trend in declining social connection, according to former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Still, the discourse surrounding this supposed epidemic comes with the usual nervy energy of Internet-brained discussion: if this is a crisis, then it must have a solution, and its causes must be easily condensed into digestible bullet points.

This reduction of the complexities of human relationships into basic cause-effect bullet points (we are more lonely…because technology!) is a useful entry point into Continue reading Friendship (2025) Movie Review →

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

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) Movie Review

After spending time revisiting all of the Final Destination films, I found the long wet cement of my opinions on the franchise finally hardening. Until now, I wasn’t quite certain on the merits of the horror series in which the unseen force of Death gleefully slaughters special individuals who at first escape Death’s grasp. There is something fun about the premise, and in discrete moments this sense of fun comes to the fore. But often, these films are fairly mild in terms of horror and fail to nail the comedy tone that I think is necessary for these film to work at all.

Final Destination: Bloodlines, thankfully, fully understands the assignment. There are moments that lean towards serious drama, but in the main this film makes Continue reading Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) Movie Review →

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

Final Destination 5 (2011) Movie Review

After a two-day marathon of all Final Destination films, what have I learned? That this franchise is as middling as I remembered it being. On the other hand, the downward trajectory that I remember this series having wasn’t exactly the case. I believe three is better than the first two, if only marginally. And four is one of the worst studio horror films out there. Then there’s five. I remembered Final Destination 5 being fairly bad, even as it leans more heavily into the humor (which I find a better option in the case of this series than going in the other direction). Perhaps I was a bit wrong.

The long opening sequence of Final Destination 5 does not look particularly good. Every about-to-be cadaver looks like a hunk of plastic moments before being sliced, diced, and pitched off the suspension bridge. But it is relatively exciting when compared to Continue reading Final Destination 5 (2011) Movie Review →

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 →

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

Final Destination 3 (2006) Movie Review

James Wong and Glen Morgan returned to the Final Destination franchise with the third installment, which some consider the high mark of the series. Final Destination 3 replicated, almost to the exact number, the box office performance of the first film ($54 million domestic, $112 worldwide). Narratively speaking, though, it is the first film in the series to consciously break from the characters and events of that initial film.

The opening premonition sequence stands out as one of the best the series has to offer. I personally still prefer the highway pileup in Final Destination 2 for its visual cohesion, but for the frenetic pacing of the rollercoaster disaster, Wong does succeed in making the action mostly clear and suspenseful. The scene plays out as all the others do: One person sees a strangely detailed vision of a horrific accident that kills dozens, then comes to and causes a massive scene. A few people get pulled away from the site of the oncoming accident as a result, setting the stage for the specter of Death to come and right the cosmic scales.

Inexplicably, a character who survives the rollercoaster discovers the crashed plane and the entire plot of Final Destination, so that the characters can get an easy jumpstart on understanding what is happening to them. The attempt for these sequels to Continue reading Final Destination 3 (2006) Movie Review →

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

Final Destination 2 (2003) Movie Review

After the financial success of Final Destination in 2000 ($53 million domestic, $112 million worldwide), New Line Cinema went ahead with a sequel. Director James Wong and writers Glen Morgan and Jeffrey Reddick did not return, leaving the sequel with a new creative team in David R. Ellis and screenwriters Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber (the latter two had no other credits at the time). Final Destination 2 would become the worst box office performing entry in the franchise (but it did provide a death so memorable and emblematic of the series that it features prominently in the TV ads for the new Final Destination: Bloodlines).

Final Destination 2 begins with the terrible decision of having a crackpot talk show guest describe the grand design of death and how the events of the first film couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. It’s a clumsy device to remind audiences of the plot of the first film, but it also creates a story world where characters are hyper-aware of the premise of the film they are a part of. Almost immediately, the protagonist, Kimberly (A.J. Cook), connects the freak accident she just experienced on the highway with the plane crash from the first film. This is efficient storytelling, I suppose, but it also lazily yadda-yadda-yaddas the finer points of the series’ premise.

The premonition sequence of the second film is fairly well-done. Some of the visual effects don’t look the absolute cleanest, but it is fun to watch the geography of the highway unfold, introducing our cast of characters and delivering a few gnarly gags. And the end of it is a genuinely surprising turnabout.

David R. Ellis, the director, spent much of his career in the stunt world. It is fitting, then, that the staging and execution of this opening sequence is exciting. Some of the other set pieces are exciting, too, albeit more mildly so. Whether intentional or not, the death scenes are also Continue reading Final Destination 2 (2003) Movie Review →

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

Final Destination (2000) Movie Review

With Final Destination: Bloodlines coming out this summer, I have decided to take a trip down memory lane and re-watch the entire franchise of you-can’t-cheat-Death-because-he-will-come-for-you-but-also-play-with-his-food-by-making-your-death-an-elaborate-Rube-Goldberg-device-of-death horror flicks. It is an odd franchise. The films were always mildly profitable and regularly found airplay on cable. But they also consistently got middling reviews, and the franchise holds something of a lesser status in the horror genre pantheon.

Final Destination and Final Destination 3 were directed by James Wong, and they were written and produced by Wong and his creative partner Glen Morgan. Wong and Morgan were regular writers on The X-Files and wrote some memorable episodes (“Squeeze,” “E.B.E.,” “Home”). Wong directed a good episode of the show titled “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man.” He also directed the heinous Dragonball: Evolution, but for the purposes of this review we won’t hold it against him.

The opening portion of Final Destination feels reminiscent of an episode of The X-Files (it was originally written as one by Jeffrey Reddick), and it has a sense of irony that looks like The Twilight Zone if you squint a little. A high school kid named Alex (Devon Sawa) has an irrational and superstitious fear of flying. He wants to keep the tag on his bag from the last flight he was on, because he knows that that plane landed safely. When he gets to the airport, he can’t help but notice Continue reading Final Destination (2000) 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 →

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

F CinemaScore Double Features: mother! (2017) and Moonchild (1972)

This is a new series centering on films which have received “F” scores from CinemaScore. CinemaScore polls theater-goers during a film’s opening weekend, gauging the average consumer’s thoughts on new releases. An F CinemaScore is potentially a PR nightmare for a film, as it indicates that, on the main, the people most excited to see a film on its opening weekend hated it.

We’ve covered F CinemaScore films on this site before, including Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly (which I think is fairly great) and the subject of this article, mother! With this series, we pair an ill-fated F CinemaScore movie with a second, thematically similar film and make a double feature out of it. Today’s double feature pairs Darren Aronofsky’s mother! with Alan Gadney’s New Age, surreal spiritual journey film Moonchild.

This is Part 1 of an ongoing series. However, future installments will be published on a new Substack newsletter called Bleeding Eye Cinema. Part 2 of the CinemaScore Double Feature series is already live at that site. On Bleeding Eye Cinema, we take a look at weird, WTF, underseen, cult, psychotronic, B- and Z-grade, and all other manner of headache-inducing movies. Come join us and let the CRT electron beams melt the jelly off your eyeballs!

Moonchild (Alan Gadney, 1972)

Moonchild begins with a quote from clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, an influential figure in what would come to be known as the New Age movement: “You may not even have to come back at all if you become perfectly developed in this life…”

One of Cayce’s trance-induced contributions to culture were his proclamations to the existence of fictional locations like Atlantis. Cayce may be the most fitting place to enter into Continue reading F CinemaScore Double Features: mother! (2017) and Moonchild (1972) →