SOUND OF METAL (Darius Marder) is an affecting journey from club stages to stillness in a quiet world. The film primarily follows Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed), a drummer for a heavy metal act called Blackgammon. Ruben and his partner Lou (Olivia Cooke) live in an Airstream motorhome that serves as a residence and travelling studio. […]
Reviews
PIXIE Review – An Engrossing & Enjoyable Story from Ireland
PIXIE (Barnaby Thompson) takes place in Northern Ireland, and as implied by its title, the story revolves around a young woman named Pixie Hardy (Olivia Cooke). Her mother was killed, but nobody really trusts her story, or her. She’s portrayed very much as a free spirit, and someone that never stops standing up for themselves. […]
MONSTER HUNTER – It’s a Milla Spectacle!
MONSTER HUNTER, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson (known for the first RESIDENT EVIL movie) is a film adaptation of a long-running Capcom video game series. I have only a passing familiarity with the games, so I can’t speak to any Easter eggs, or backstory, that more experienced players might notice. The story establishes that […]
RAYA & THE LAST DRAGON Review – Get Your Tuk-Tuks Out
I have always felt that these days, Disney-Slash-Pixar titles seem to get all of the attention in the animation game. Which in a way is alright (SOUL, the latest Pixar movie, was my #1 movie of 2020) but there is another aspect to Disney that gets overlooked these days is its Walt Disney Animation Studios department […]
MINARI review – A Slice of Life Presentation
It isn’t often that a movie can be described as endearing, yet that was the feeling that permeated MINARI (Lee Isaac Chung). The film has a ‘slice of life’ presentation, as it follows a tumultuous period for a Korean family. Moving from California, we join the family in their car, as they follow a moving […]
Ten Decades of Oscars: YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938)
Hello! And welcome to the second installment of my weekly feature Ten Decades of Oscars where each week I’ll watch every Best Picture from a given decade, then choose one to discuss at length. This week, it’s Frank Capra’s YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU, which won top prize in 1938. The film follows the […]
A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX review – Free Your Mind
Ask yourself “Did you want to visit this website?” If you believe that our world might not exist, then your visit might be the result of forces beyond your understanding. A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX (Rodney Ascher) explores the belief of simulation theory. This idea is not new, and has been a mainstay of recent […]
Ten Decades of Oscars: WINGS (1927)
Hello! And welcome to a weekly feature I’ll be writing in the run-up to the 2020 Oscars on April 25th. I’m one of those idiots who still buys physical media—often an annual metric tonnage of it—and I’m also one of those idiots who can’t help but be swept up in the politics and the competition […]
Black History Month review – JUST MERCY
The story of JUST MERCY, directed and co-written by Destin Daniel Cretton (SHORT TERM 12), begins in a forest. A logger looks up at a patch of sky, obscured moments ago by the tree he just fell. This becomes a significant memory. The way the branches are described as dancers in the wind. It’s the […]
JUDAS & THE BLACK MESSIAH Review – Fred Turner is Revolutionary
A movie I have been waiting to see for quite a long time (I remember seeing a trailer for this last summer when TENET made its theatrical release), JUDAS & THE BLACK MESSIAH finally arrives in release at a very important time in our bizarre, always-changing world. With so many people all over the world […]
BARB & STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR – It’s Time For A Holiday!
I can’t believe that it has been almost a decade since BRIDESMAIDS was released into theatres. A combination of both FREAKS & GEEKS creator Paul Feig’s comedic styling along with Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumulo’s wickedly funny screenplay, I still remember laughing loud and long throughout the picture and revisiting it several times over the […]
THE LITTLE THINGS Review – Denzel + Rami + Jared = Oh My!
Starring three big-time Oscar winners all with very different personalities, THE LITTLE THINGS is a rare serial killer drama/thriller that I feel like we rarely see from the studio system anymore, though these types of movies mostly starred Denzel Washington in some form; immediate thoughts of THE BONE COLLECTOR and FRAILTY come to mind. There […]
Review – Wolfwalkers – Taking Animation To The Next Level
WOLFWALKERS came as a very nice surprise, and a movie that I not only watched a second time, but would highly recommend. I was left so interested in the film, I learned that it’s the final entry of a trilogy grown from Celtic folklore (the previous two being the highly acclaimed SONG OF THE SEA […]
Review – SOUL or…how Joel Gardner Got His Groove Back
It’s always a treat when a new Disney-Pixar movie gets released and I am a fan of these movies as much as the next person, but the wait to see the latest title SOUL was a VERY long one, after being repeatedly delayed thanks to the pandemic, Disney decided to release the movie on their […]
Wonder Woman 1984 – A Sequel You Can Finally See!
The first WONDER WOMAN came out in summer of 2017 and only took until a recent viewing to really appreciate the picture. I quickly noticed that you could either be a devout comic book fan and appreciate it one way, but the casual viewer could also just go and enjoy it with a big bag […]