The magic of Monkey Man, doesn’t come from its incredible fight scenes, or it’s brilliant choreography or it’s smart and intelligent cinematography. Instead, it comes from an obvious struggle. You can see, throughout this movie, that Dev Patel’s blood is everywhere. There’s no part of this film that doesn’t scream like something trying to rip its way up through an artist's chest, and out of their mouth.
Read MoreHonestly, this movie is a blast. The action is incredible, the choreography and cinematography are on point. The characters remain believable and motivated. I just wish, when it was all done, we were in a different place. There is resolution here, and I don’t mean to take away from that, but the resolution feels like it lacks impact. Largely because despite all John does, at the end of the film, the world is more or less unchanged.
Read MoreTruly Avatar: The Way of Water is going to change the way a lot of things are done going forward, just as the first film did. Sometimes you have to see a movie in the theater to get the fullest experience. If there was any film this year that fit this designation perfectly, it’s this one. Do yourself a favor: go see this on the biggest screen you can find. 3D or not, it will blow your socks right off your feet. What an experience.
Read MoreSometimes you watch a movie and it’s immediately apparent what that film is about. Sometimes you take the experience home and chew on it a bit, finding different flavors and expressions along the way. I delayed this review being published on purpose. So many times a review exists to give you that last push to leave your house to head to the theater. I delayed this review because I think you need to watch this film first, then sit with someone, perhaps this review, and think about it.
Read MoreAmsterdam isn’t perfect but it has a lot of heart where it counts. The cast is astronomically loaded, the performances are all genuine and convincing, and its message will land a lot closer to home than it should. Largely because Americans are confronted with issues no one from this era (the 30s) would have expected us to still be dealing with. It’s fascinating, confounding, and moving. Things I imagine anyone forging a mystery would hope people took away from their work.
Read MoreThree Thousand Years of Longing is a tale of a woman who finds a genie in a bottle and is granted three wishes. It’s not an unfamiliar story, and often times it these stories walk the line of cautionary tale more than anything. It’s hard to imagine getting their heart’s desire granted three times and not see the possibility of deeply problematic requests. The way this movie approaches djinn and their wish granting ability is fully self-aware of these potential pitfalls. So, instead, we get a daringly intimate tale of a woman and her Djinn.
Read MoreBullet Train is what happens when you blend Ocean’s Eleven and Murder on the Orient Express. If you were to then look to me for another sentence or two more I would follow that by simply saying, If you let the guy who directed John Wick and Deadpool 2 direct it. Boom. Sold. That is this movie. Its wild, irreverent, harebrained, and a great time.
Read MoreKnowing how something is going to end is generally a source of comfort going into a movie based on events that took place in the real world. If Ron Howard has made anything clear in his approach to these types of films, nothing could be further from the truth. The veteran of Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, Everest, and Rush knows full-well how to make a movie gripping, regardless of the audience’s understanding of how events would play out.
Read MoreI’m not sure Jordan Peele knows how to miss. At the very least, he hasn’t missed yet. NOPE is a fantastic flick, with an absolutely stellar atmosphere and execution. Go see it in the largest and loudest format you can because the sound engineering elevates it to still another level of greatness. And don’t blame yourself if, for the next several days, you catch yourself watching the sky thinking, “…nope.”
Read MoreIt’s nearly equal parts a coming of age tale, a romance, a murder mystery, and a courtroom drama, and while I enjoy all of those things, balancing them all at once is a precarious task. Knowing that this movie is based on a novel contextualizes some of the rapid transitioning. Where the Crawdads Sing is an admirable attempt at an adaptation. Even if it occasionally catches you off guard by accelerating the plot.
Read MoreAs an adult, more importantly as a parent, what I find silly is that while writing this review I found myself debating the principles of film. I find it pretty significantly comical that I almost wrote about this movies adherence to the three act structure, or the fact that I wanted to measure its necessity in the larger universe of Minions films. The reality is that this movie was made for children, and as someone who got to watch it in a room full of children, they loved it.
Read MoreFor a movie that ostensibly didn’t need to exist, Lightyear does a tremendous job campaigning for that existence, thrilling viewers with a space spectacle that feels right at home in its universe, and furthermore, lives up brilliantly to its initial pitch. If I had seen this as a five year old, I would have absolutely begged my mom for a Buzz toy. After this movie who wouldn’t?
Read MoreFollowing the cataclysmic events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom the Jurassic World park has failed yet again, only this time the dinosaurs got out, migrating across the world. Those events have the possibility to set up a world in which dinosaurs have truly taken over the ecosystem. I will admit, the potential of a Jurassic movie that edges on the post apocalyptic, with dinosaurs taking over cities and people fleeing new and dangerous predators is a delicious idea.
Read MoreIn an era where action movies were standalone, twenty or thirty years later, why not stir up that nostalgic feeling? It’s a guaranteed draw at the box office. So bring the crew back together, drum up some old tunes, and rip into the sky again. If part of your argument is that special effects and film quality has jumped astronomically since the 80s, Top Gun is a prime choice of a revisit.
Read MoreLiam Neeson, in my approximation, can be attributed with reigniting America’s fervor for the solo action hero flick. Sure, there are others that started to come out around the same time as the first Taken, but Wanted, Rock n’ Rolla, and The Bank Job hardly captured the attention of moviegoers like Neeson’s kidnapping revenge flick. His most recent, Memory, is a great addition to a summer season that is getting properly spun up.
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