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Doctor Sleep Review: Worth Staying Up For

Jason Gorber — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 19:00:29 +0000

Consider me shocked. As much as I enjoyed director Mike Flanagan’s Oculus, the idea of messing with Stanley Kubrick’s vision by making a sequel to The Shining is a tough prescription for Doctor Sleep to fill. Most of you already know that Stephen King didn’t care for what Kubrick did to The Shining. His 2013...

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Motherless Brooklyn Review: One Gumshoe Short of a Pair

Deirdre Crimmins — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 17:00:06 +0000

Film noir can be a tough sell in modern cinema. Motherless Brooklyn seems intent on displaying all the reasons why it doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean it’s a total waste of 144 minutes. When a film in 2019 not only has a voiceover, but that voiceover uses the word “gumshoe” without irony, you know...

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Terminator: Dark Fate Review – The Future Is Still Not Set

Jason Gorber — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 19:00:53 +0000

Is there a franchise where the notion sequels is more baked-in than The Terminator? We should have known that the famous line “I’ll be back” was more than a just a quip, but a mantra promising decades of reboots and rethinks. With Terminator: Dark Fate, we finally have another chapter worthy of the first two...

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Trick Review: Tale from a Hood

Deirdre Crimmins — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 15:00:58 +0000

‘Tis the season for a deluge of horror films to his screens big and small. Don’t go writing them off as a whole. Plenty of the smaller ones, like the perfectly entertaining Trick, are good for some quick scares and popcorn levity. Starting on Halloween 2015, a college costume party looks like your typical night...

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Zombieland: Double Tap Review – Not Quite Tapped Out Yet

Deirdre Crimmins — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 12:00:48 +0000

Ten years and sixteen days after the first Zombieland was released, we finally get to see what those crazy living humans have been up to all these years. Zombieland: Double Tap is a fun enough visit with familiar characters, though not nearly as much fun as the first film. Picking up essentially ten years after...

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Maleficient: Mistress of Evil Review – Another Horny Fairy Tale

Deirdre Crimmins — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 16:00:22 +0000

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil may appear to be the next in the long list of Disney’s live-action remakes, but don’t let that scare you away. This tale of revenge and horns is the rare case of the corporate giant taking a risk, for better and sometimes for worse. The saga of the unending Disney reboots...

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The Addams Family (2019) Review: Not Creepy, Not Kooky, Not Mysterious Nor Spooky

Deirdre Crimmins — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 16:00:11 +0000

With well-established source material and a pedigreed duo of directors, The Addams Family should have been an easy win. Somehow, it never comes together into a coherent family film. Directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon are the pair behind the hilarious and astonishingly socially progressive Sausage Party. They might not seem like a natural choice...

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Gemini Man Review: Twice the Mediocrity, Five Times More Often

Jason Gorber — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 12:00:42 +0000

The original script for Gemini Man was in the hands of Tony Scott back in 1997. After two decades of production hell and a half dozen other directors attached, the sci-fi thriller about a hitman and his clone finally hits the big screen, and the plot is the least interesting or inventive part of the...

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Joker Review: Empty Jesters

Deirdre Crimmins — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 16:00:05 +0000

Few films this year have gotten as much pre-release buzz as Joker. After all that speculation, we can finally see the already-laureled movie and it’s mostly fine. The DC Comics villain’s latest iteration comes to screen from the director who also brought us Old School, Road Trip, and all three parts of The Hangover saga....

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Judy Review: This Can’t Be Love

Jason Gorber — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 12:00:51 +0000

In many ways, Judy is a run-of-the mill bio-pic that tells the tale of a beloved Hollywood star hoping for a last glimpse of glory at career’s end. Settling somewhere between Paul McGuigan’s underappreciated Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool and last year’s warm if egregiously maudlin Stan & Ollie, the film serves as a...

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Rambo: Last Blood Review – Bled Dry

Jason Gorber — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 17:00:12 +0000

The last scenes in Rambo: Last Blood, the fifth and supposedly final film in Sylvester Stallone’s signature action series, are a montage of clips from 1982’s First Blood all the way to some from the film we just sat through. This recap is a convenient reminder that the first film was a probing, philosophically rich...

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Depraved Review: A Postmodern Prometheus

Deirdre Crimmins — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 15:00:01 +0000

Depraved is director Larry Fessenden’s take on the Frankenstein story, with his own modern twist. The update makes it gloriously timely without losing any of the underlying tragedy of the original tale. After a terrible attack one night, Alex (Owen Campbell) looks like he has been left for dead. Rather than this being the end...

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