Category: Movies

Gosling's acting skills are on full display in this film. He's one of the greatest actors of his generation, and only an actor with his level of skill can pull off the initial scenes in which he's wondering all alone in the spacecraft. He may not be at the level of Tom Hanks

The film begins to go off the rails when, in a conversation with her four siblings, Margot criticizes Jim for being overly involved in Jenni's life. Jim overhears this conversation and decides to seek revenge by sabotaging the Buckley wedding.

From here, the movie turns increasingly unpleasant. First, Jim

3/10

“You’re Cordially Invited” (2025) is a dreadful movie, but of all the ways in which it fails, none is more off-putting than the cruelty of it all. I felt unclean watching this film, a purportedly light-hearted, romantic comedy.

Take, for example, character development.

Furiosa has very little dialogue, but her prowess and character are evident from what's presented on screen. That's the product of good acting and fine directing, neither of which exists in any Michael Bay film.

Dear Max,

In thanks for so graciously hosting me for a week with your family, I've penned this letter to you, wrapped up in a review of "Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015), in order to give you some advice regarding your future as a movie-lover.

Take the scene where Eloise, Alice and other bridesmaids hold a bachelorette party on a boat in the London river. If you’ve ever seen an unfunny comedy before, you can see the payoff coming a mile away.

Or take Paul. He’s going to the wedding with

“The People We Hate at the Wedding” (2022), available exclusively on Amazon Prime, is one of the oddest movies I’ve ever seen.

I don't mean it 's odd in the quality. By any account, this movie is downright mediocre, which is even worse than landing on the year’s

(3.5/10)

"Cinderella," a 2021 musical remake of the classic Disney story, is one of the most schizophrenic movies I have ever seen. Does it take place a long time ago in some far away land, or does it take place in modern times in a land that is a weird

Good sequels are hard to make. Really hard.

That's because the mere existence of a sequel suggests that the original was pretty good. It's hard enough to catch a lightening in the bottle once; it's nearly impossible to do it twice.

Which makes

6.5/10

"The Alpinist" (2021) is a documentary about a 23-year old "free soloist" named Marc-André Leclerc who climbs ice and rock alone without ropes, harnesses or any other safety precautions. In capturing the dare devil pursuits of a man obsessed with conquering mother nature's greatest challenges, this movie will

At the core, all movies are about storytelling. Many do this poorly and only the distinguished few do it memorably, but all films have the two components of the “story” and the “telling”.

For the most part, the "story" component gets all the attention. Audiences are always

Astonishingly, in the 30 years it took these people to come up with a story and script, they couldn't infuse much humor into their work. There is exactly one scene that elicit laughs, where a white, privileged interviewer tries to "get" the black, less-than-privileged upbringing of Lavelle. For the rest of

(3.5/10)

"Coming 2 America" (2021), a sequel to the 1988 classic "Coming to America" exclusively broadcast on Amazon Prime, is so stunningly inept that one wonders how it ever got beyond the story concept phase.

The film picks up 30 years after the original. Prince Akeem

Tom Dolan (Nielson) is an ex-U.S. Marine who's successfully pulled off several bank robberies without getting caught. One day, he goes to a storage unit facility looking for a place to store the money he stole, and meets Annie Wilkins (Kate Walsh), a psychology graduate student who is an employee there.

7/10

"F9: The Fast Saga" is a ridiculous movie.

Take the opening thirty minutes of the film. The familiar Toretto gang led by Dom (Vin Diesel) is chased by the national military of a fictitious country called Montequinto and manages to drive through landmines

5.5/10

I am a fan of writer and director M. Night Shyamalan. I like his storytelling, cinematography, pacing and mood. I am so much of a fan that I can instantly tell that a preview is that of his film by just looking at the first shot.

I think "Unfinished Business" (2015) is intended to be a comedy.

I make this statement based on the film's poster, which has stars Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco in ridiculous poses. I sense this must be the case, because the film places its main characters

I have a personal axiom about movies, and it goes something like this: "Anyone, at any time, with enough perseverance, can make a film; only a select few, on the rarest of occasions, with a lot of luck, can make the great film."

No movie epitomizes the first half

Linklater tells this wonderful story with subtlety made possible by his artistic vision. He doesn't need a cheesy transition or an overbearing "two years later" caption. He relies on the natural aging of the actors and the events of the times, like the Iraq War, Harry Potter, Obama-McCain presidential campaign, High

8/10

Of the many things to love about "Boyhood" (2014), I most loved the sheer ambition. To create a coming-of-age movie using the same actor through his own growth filmed over 12 years is an audacious undertaking.

Consider the challenges.

Director

The fundamental issue with "Tenet" is that it saddled a baffling concept with an unnecessarily complicated story. There's Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), about whom the only thing film makes clear is that he's the villain. Then there's his wife (Elizabeth Debicki) and the fake paintings she had his estranged

(5.5/10)

The question you need to ask with a movie like "Tenet" (2020) is: for whom was this made?

Maybe it was for director and writer Christopher Nolan, who has established enough pedigree that a studio will shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for a

The original animation spent the entire film developing the friendship between the lonely Dumbo and a little mouse named Timothy Q, who helps Dumbo keep up his spirits and eventually helps him learn to fly. Dumbo's flight is the culmination of their journey together.

But in "Dumbo", there's no

(3.5/10)

I sensed something was amiss early in the live-action adaptation of "Dumbo" (2019), when the film dedicates the first fifteen minutes to the manufactured tragedy of inordinate number of human characters before a single elephant makes an appearance.