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The Substance - Movie Review

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The Substance - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Every year at the Cannes Film Festival in France, filmmakers, critics and movie lovers from across the globe gather to revel in the art form that is cinema, the motion picture. At the conclusion they give out awards, somewhat similar to the Oscars. This year one of the films that was nominated for the festival’s top prize of Palme d’Or and won the Best Screenplay award was the new film The Substance, from writer/director Coralie Fargeat. From the same mind that brought us Revenge (2017), her new film is just hitting theatres and delves deep into the same vein of body horror as, say, the French film Titane from Julia Docournau a few years ago. Now if you thought that film was sexy, twisted, disturbing, and probably perverse, Fargeat essentially told Docournau, “Hold my beer.” Nothing that I say or explain about this movie can really prepare you adequately for what you will behold when you enter the the
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Alien Romulus - Movie Review

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Alien Romulus - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 9 of 10 This summer has been chock full of films from already established IP’s. Despicable Me 4, Inside Out 2, Twisters, Deadpool and the list goes on and on. Some of these films were serviceable and provided some entertainment value in their own right. Others were an absolute slog to get through with very few of them being creatively executed. Furiosa probably being the one solid exception. Well we finally got an interesting prequel-sequel, depending on which aspect of the franchise you approach it from, with the new Alien Romulus film. It utilizes many of the elements from the franchise in new and inventive ways that was not only tension inducing but also felt very fresh and original. Where most of these other summer films seemed very copy and paste in their approach to telling their story, Romulus seemed more interested in reinventing itself, even with the overall narrative being not too dissimilar from th
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Ghostlight - Movie Review

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Ghostlight - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 6 of 10 So in most places growing up, there are usually books that are required reading in school. Here in the U.S. you’d find books like Catcher In The Rye, Of Mice And Men, The Great Gatsby as well as books by Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens and such among those reading assignments. One name that would almost certainly make every English teachers assigned curriculum of authors would be William Shakespeare, with his popular tale of Romeo And Juliet being about his most famous play. Well, the new IFC film Ghostlight released over this summer weaves the Romeo And Juliet narrative into its plot in a very creative and ultimately heartbreaking way. I won’t stray into spoilers other than to say that this family drama is as touching and tear jerking as they come, without steering into the melodrama of this small family’s situation. A father and mother of a troubled teenage daughter are struggling to find ways to con
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Sing Sing - Movie Review

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Sing Sing - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Full disclosure, I’ve never been incarcerated, nor do I have anybody close to me that is or has been. The closest thing that I’ve known to prison is when I watch films like The Shawshank Redemption or Great Freedom. I can only try to get in the headspace of someone going through that kind of extremely difficult situation. Well, the new A24 film Sing Sing tells the tale of a group of inmates, almost all of whom play themselves in the film. We watch the theatre group as they brainstorm, prepare for and rehearse a production put on by the Sing Sing correctional facility located in New York. This is a touching story of about ten men who develop a comradery as they go about this project, but it also highlights some flaws of the system that’s designed to keep them behind bars. While this was a beautiful and interesting piece of cinema, it didn’t really make a strong emotional impact on me, which it could’ve had
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Strange Darling - Movie Review

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Strange Darling - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 9 of 10 I’ve seen most of the big summer movies for 2024 with the exception of a few. Some have been pretty good, some have been underwhelming and a few just plain duds. Well who’d have thought that in late August the bomb would drop of what has to be without question the best film of the summer, but also undoubtedly one of the best films of the year to boot. A new two hander psychological thriller Strange Darling stumbles its way into theatres this weekend without much fanfare, yet it is the epitome of why I not only love cinema, but began to write film reviews as well. People need to know about amazing pieces of filmmaking such as this one and I want to help spread the word on them. That being said, I will keep my opening remarks vague for the sake of not spoiling anything, but I would encourage anybody to go into this film as blind as possible. It’s a fantastically wild ride that left me breathless. This
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Twisters - Movie Review

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Twisters - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 I can still remember my first experience with the original Twister movie, even though it was now almost 30 years ago 😱. I lived in Michigan but went to see it with my good friend Justin in Florida, I got so sick afterwards I almost threw up in his family’s minivan. Despite the rough start, I’ve loved that film ever since, went through an unhealthy obsession with tornadoes for a while and the poster hung on my wall for years. Naturally I was quite interested to see what the new Twisters would be, yet tapered my expectations for anything in the mainstream “blockbuster” season. Even with the writer/director Lee Isaac Chung of the Best Picture nominated Minari at the helm, Chung had no hand in the writing of this new film, so my skepticism was still hanging over Twisters like a . . . (insert bad weather pun). Like so many of the big studio remakes, sequels and prequels, they mostly follow a cut and paste form
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Longlegs - Movie Review

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Longlegs - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 The serial killer film is a very popular subgenre of the crime/thriller drama, but is a difficult film to really hit the sweet spot of appeal to general audiences. Films like Silence Of The Lambs, Se7en and even Zodiac all have a number of elements in common that make them excel like dark and tense atmospheres, great character development and arguably most importantly, a great menacing villain to compel the main plotline forward. The new Neon title Longlegs is a serial killer film starring Nicolas Cage as the killer Longlegs and follows the story of Agent Lee Harker played by the decently cast Maika Monroe in her efforts to catch him. To put it simply, this film excels in many of its technical filmmaking aspects. Not only is Cage killing it in the role, pun intended, the film is exceedingly effective through the first two acts at creating and enveloping us in a dark, tense and foreboding atmosphere. Some o
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Inside Out 2 - Movie Review

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Inside Out 2 - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Kids Score - 8 of 10 The original Inside Out is not only one of my favorite Pixar films, but one of the films I’ve seen the most in a theatre, I think five total times. As it came out in 2015, my two boys were very young so the colorful characters and storyline of grappling with our emotions and becoming aware of our feelings made this film a staple in my household. We even had a set of the five original stuffed characters laying around our home a while. Well, we now have an expanded Inside Out universe with Pixar releasing a sequel to the original film, Inside Out 2, which continues the story of Riley as she begins to navigate the waters of adolescence. The film stars most of the original cast of voice actors minus Bill Hader (Fear) and Mindy Kaling (Disgust) who’s serviceable replacements will only be really noticeable to hardcore fans of the original, like myself. With the amazing Oscar winning Pete
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - Movie Review

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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 George Miller is a director that has a pretty varied filmography, from doing several children’s films including the animated Happy Feet movies to adult dramas like Lorenzo’s Oil. But the genre he has leaned into the most throughout his long career has to be action and adventure, from which he has given us the Mad Max series, for which he’ll no doubt be most remembered. While the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road was undoubtedly his pinnacle achievement in the series, Miller continues the world building of the story he reignited with the new film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I’ll refer to it as Furiosa for simplicity sake going forward. The film stars Anya-Taylor Joy reprising Charlize Theron’s Furiosa character from the 2015 film and Chris Hemsworth stars as the dull-witted yet still politically savvy antagonist, Dementus. This film, as was its predecessor, is impeccably well crafted, excels on a tec
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I Saw The TV Glow - Movie Review

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I Saw The TV Glow - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 5 of 10 Google a definition of the word reality, you’ll get #1 - “the world or state of things as they actually exist” and #2 - “the state or quality of having existence or substance”. But what makes something real? What actually exists? What percentage of people have to agree something is reality for it to be so? The new A24 film called I Saw The TV Glow attempts to discuss some of these topics, life, existence, our individual perception of reality. Reality states the earth is round, but certain people believe the earth is flat. And five hundred years ago, everyone held that belief. So what was their reality? I was raised in a religious cult, whose members believe that the end of the world will come soon and they live their lives in preparation for this belief. This is not reality, probably not for you, not for me anymore, but for the people that carry these beliefs, they live their lives preparing for t
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