1st Reviews

  Mufasa  boasts a beautiful cinematic experience that’s best experienced in 3D. The visuals are transporting with their photorealism and colorful sceneries of the wild world, and get to develop new settings without behind held back by recreating scenes from another movie the way 2019’s  The Lion King  was. That alone warrants the theatrical experience here, and not much else. Though  Mufasa  isn’t remaking another beloved movie anymore, it’s still restrained by the same lack of characterization that made the photorealistic animals feel emotionally distant in its predecessor. The animals can’t quite emote like they can in other animated films, and this creates a tonal dissonance between what the original 1994 film set for the franchise and the photoreal road the filmmakers are going down now. Aaron Pierre’s gravitas gives Mufasa just the right profundity, but Kelvin Harrison Jr., who’s a wonderful actor, feels rather miscast as Scar, a character who feels i...

Carry-On is like Die Hard, but set in an airport. Oh… wait a second, that’s just Die Hard 2. Okay, so Carry-On is like Die Hard 2 meets Phone Booth, and while not as good as either of those movies, it provides sufficient thrills with a touch of Christmas spirit.  Where this movie excels is in the simplicity of its premise. It’s essentially a hostage situation where the villain is using the protagonist as a puppet. Jason Bateman plays a terrorist trying to get a mysterious briefcase through an airport. Taron Egerton plays a TSA agent who’s forced to comply with Bateman’s demands, in order to keep his friends and loved ones alive. It maintains a solid level of suspense, and I found myself constantly wondering how Egerton’s character would adapt and react to the increasingly stressful and dangerous situations he was placed in.  Where this movie really falters, is in the execution of those tense situations, and just how completely implausibly they often play out. I’m fine with sus...

  The American Dream has been deconstructed many times on screen with sweeping epics that define a decade. The tale of immigrants attempting to break through a system working against them has had many iterations that have become devastating depictions of the obstacles faced.   Brady Corbet’s  The Brutalist  is a unique journey of one man’s dream of artistic ideation and standing the test of time through his architecture. When visionary architect Lászlò Toth (Adrien Brody) and his wife Erzsébet fled post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy, they met a wealthy client, Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce), who changed their lives forever.  The opening crawl of  The Brutalist  hits the senses with an incredible overture by Daniel Blumberg and an inspiring journey ahead for Lászlò Toth. The first half is a slow build with rich dialogue showing the business tactics used to work the system in America.  Brody’s earnest performance is endearing w...

Sergei Kravinoff, the son of a crime lord, develops a gift for fighting for and defending wild animals, but soon old and new foes from his life converge as he must embark on the most dangerous fight of his life. Explaining the movie just then was a difficult task, not in an effort to avoid spoilers of the premise, but because the movie is so shallow it’s hard to really try and sell. It doesn’t quite make much sense, but worst of all, it isn’t fun to sit through. Weak character motivations and a hideous visual style plague this so-called origin story for another Spider-Man villain who Sony tries to manipulate into an antihero, rather unconvincingly. Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s casting as the titular character could’ve been promising in another movie, but he instead looks bored with the material he’s given, and who can blame him? Ariana DeBose and Fred Hechinger are also trying to salvage characters given no weight, but Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe are all awful. N...

  Wicked: Part One defies gravity and expectations, with one of the greatest stage to screen adaptations of all time. Jon M. Chu captures the magic of cinema, with a movie that demands to be seen with an audience on the biggest screen possible.  Bringing a stage play to the screen is no easy feat, but this film so effortlessly embodies everything I experienced watching the broadway show. The tone, heart and spirit of the play are preserved in ways I never expected, especially from a big Hollywood production. It naturally feels much grander, showing us so much more of Oz than was possible on the stage. Bigger isn’t always better, but the story is never lost in the spectacle - in fact, it’s elevated by it. We’re given such bombastic, sweeping sequences, including the exhilarating musical numbers, but when the film pulls back in for those more intimate moments, it grabs all the right heartstrings.  My biggest fear going in was the runtime, clocking in at a whopping 2 hours a...

  Angelina Jolie portrays opera singer Maria Callas as she reflects on her life of song, love, and pain. Pablo Larrain's visual style is breathtaking, with the large sets of Maria's house and the beautiful shots of 1970s France reminding us that this is a filmmaker always in full command of his craftsmanship. He dives deep into the soul of Callas as she looks deep into herself as well, and Jolie's commanding, multilayered portrayal of the singer is spectacular. Jolie not only wonderfully acts the singing scenes, but shows the aching of a woman whose meaning and sense of self has always been attributed to the one thing she's losing: her voice. The movie shows us much about who Maria is, but not enough about who she  was  throughout her life to reach this point -- not factually, but emotionally, making the audience guess all of this. The editing doesn't quite manage to pull us into these dazzling flashbacks of Maria in her prime, and at worst, feel like rather frustra...

  If you were to ask me “Are you not entertained?” during my time with Gladiator II, I would answer “I am, but only mildly”. Ridley Scott’s legacy sequel provides solid popcorn entertainment, but fails to fill the giant sandals of his best picture winning epic.  Let’s be clear: Gladiator II isn’t a bad movie. The action is satisfying, the set-pieces are grand, and the performances are quite strong. However, it’s hard to escape the shadow of its predecessor, which is widely regarded by many as one of the greatest films of the 2000s. As an extension of the story and ideas the first film established, it works, but it lacks the emotional depth and thrill needed to get audiences invested in this new chapter. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it soulless, but it doesn’t strike me as being very inspired. The final act, while still entertaining, is also a lot sloppier than everything leading up to it.  Ridley Scott is no stranger to crafting big, historical epics, and his experienc...

  The sixties were a decade of radical change. At the time, communities came together to stand and show their power. Many turned to music to express themselves and reassure the American people that even though the world around them is changing, they can be on the right side of history and change with it positively.   When Bob Dylan stepped onto the scene in 1962, he was influenced by Woody Guthrie’s folk music. Dylan is a highly decorated musician because of how gifted he was lyrically. The lyrics were impactful, and some songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin” became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements.  Dylan’s lyrics had distinct prose as he drew inspiration from poetry and classic literature. He was a storyteller who made connections with American culture and events. Dylan was an advocate. He used his lyrics to help reassure others and inform people about the shifting tide of the American sociopolitical climate. He wanted ...

  Nickel Boys  tells of the powerful friendship between two young black men navigating the harrowing trials of a notoriously abusive reform school together in Florida. From that description alone, this may not sound like such a radical work of cinema quite yet, until you learn the key piece that defines it all: the movie is filmed completely from the first-person point-of-view of the teen friends and protagonists Elwood and Turner. Through this effect, you feel like you’re living a lifetime with them, traveling back to the 1960s, particularly into some of the deepest, darkest holes dug by America’s foundations that ruthlessly and systemically discriminated against people of color. It’s an invisible feat to get your audience to immediately care about a character whose face you barely see, but through Elwood’s perspective, we’re pulled and immersed into a heart-stopping time capsule. This experience may feel jarring at first, and the editing does occasionally break the gimmick’s...

Everybody knows the story of Frosty the Snowman - brought to life by a group of children using a magic hat and, well… you know how the rest goes. But what if Frosty was a muscular hunk? What if he had a crush on the local town widow? Fear not, Hot Frosty is here to provide answers to those burning questions.  Combining the goofiness of an early 2000’s concept comedy with the sappiness of a Hallmark Christmas special, this movie finds itself somewhere in between those genres. While it fails to lean into its gimmick as far as it should or could have, it functions well enough to provide easy viewing with decent entertainment value. Hallmark channel enthusiasts will eat this up, but it’s got plenty to like for casual audiences too - even if, like myself, you usually can’t stand these types of movies.  A very ripped Dustin Milligan plays Jack the snowman, who’s brought to life by a magic scarf. Kathy (Lacy Chabert) - the owner of said scarf, takes him in and helps him adapt to life...

  In 2018, a historic moment happened at the 90th Academy Awards, with Cinematographer Rachel Morrison being the first woman nominated. Her work in   Black Panther  garnered critical acclaim, and she has been a filmmaker to watch ever since.   After that, she worked on the Dee Rees film  Mudbound  and solidified herself as a director of photography who captures the pain and beauty of characters within the frame. Morrison dabbled in directing television episodes of  The Morning Show  and  The Mandalorian  but wanted to find the right project for her directorial debut.  Morrison chose a sports biopic with Barry Jenkins as a screenwriter for  The Fire Inside.  Morrison explored the life of Claressa ’T-Rex’ Shields (Ryan Destiny), an inspiring true story about a female boxer from Flint, Michigan, who worked her way to win Olympic gold. Shields is the first woman in her country’s history to win an Olympic gold medal for the spo...