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 […]
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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 […]
Continue reading »Nope (2022) ☆ ☆ ☆
With Nope (a terrible title) being a science fiction / horror film with some sort of flying saucer at its center there was no way I was going to miss this one. It’s a wild film, and a layered one, ambiguous […]
Continue reading »Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) ☆ ☆
The Despicable Me films are irrepressibly cute, in a clever, wacky kind of way, and this movie (the fifth in the franchise, not counting a few shorts) continues the tradition. It’s as clever and fun as the others, and to a […]
Continue reading »The Contractor (2022) ☆ ☆
“The mission is not what it seems.” Well, no kidding. Virtually no suspense / thriller / action / drama made today is what it seems, because trickery and duplicitousness is what filmmakers think audiences want. Double- and triple-crosses abound in […]
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