Well, this movie sure surprised me. I expected a flashy, perhaps overproduced, probably superficial biography of Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll. That was all present, especially early, when a plethora of split screen views, stylish location labels, […]
Continue reading »Month: August 2022
Blacklight (2022) ☆ ☆
Late-blooming action star Liam Neeson is still mixing it up with well-trained terrorists and shady government agents almost fifteen years after his breakout action hit Taken (prior to that he still had ambitions in serious films like The Bounty, Schindler’s List and Rob […]
Continue reading »Fall (2022) ☆ ☆ ☆
Another movie about people in peril is Fall, a film which no one who suffers from a fear of heights will feel comfortable watching. That includes me. The filmmaking team does a masterful job of framing the camera to maximize the […]
Continue reading »Beast (2022) ☆ ☆
Imagine Cujo on the African veldt and you have the gist of Beast, wherein a rogue lion goes on the rampage and threatens a family visiting from America, who are barely safe in a damaged Land Rover while the lion stalks […]
Continue reading »Robotapocalypse (2021) ☆
The Asylum strikes again by presenting a movie with an interesting premise and failing in just about every way to make it work. This company constantly produces schlock and we (I) should know better than to expect anything else. This […]
Continue reading »Coraline (2009) ☆ ☆
No, Coraline is not really a recent release. But it did receive a screening at my local AMC today through Fathom Events, and I attended it with my wife, her sister and her sister’s husband. Everybody enjoyed it but me. When […]
Continue reading »E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
I don’t believe I’ve ever formally reviewed this evergreen title before; I graduated college just before E. T. premiered and the few reviews I wrote for local papers came before or after it. I did mention it on my “Sneak Previews” audition […]
Continue reading »Best Sellers (2021) ☆ ☆
It has always been difficult for films to realistically and meaningfully translate the process of writing to the screen. The old school writer types, rips the unfinished paper out of the typewriter, smashes it into a ball and slams it […]
Continue reading »Is it real if it’s not recorded?
This week I was struck by one theme figuring prominently in two radically disparate movies. Both Nope and Vengeance have characters question whether events that are not recorded are real. That’s an exaggeration, of course; what they are questioning is whether such […]
Continue reading »Vengeance (2022) ☆ ☆ ☆
With the release of Vengeance, character actor B. J. Novak moves into the rank of writer-director-star in the Hollywood hierarchy. Probably best known for his run on “The Office,” Novak has written and directed episodes of that and other television shows […]
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