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Civil War - Movie Review

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Civil War - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 I’m a simple film critic. People make movies and I assess them via a number of measurables from a technical perspective, but also with my own preferences and biases I try and determine a films “worthiness”. I simply watch films and try and direct people to watch ones I think are of exceptional value or interest. Is what I do important? I don’t feel it is. It is my hobby, I don’t do it for money, I do it because I love it. I love that I live in a country where I have the freedom to make those decisions for myself and that I can live the way I want to with my family. I love that English director Alex Garland has the freedom to make the movies he wants to make, including the latest film from A24, Civil War. This film follows a group of journalists as they make their way towards Washington D.C. to try and interview the president. Except in this fictional world, the president has effectively ended the constitu
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Monkey Man - Movie Review

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Monkey Man - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Although extremely popular, the revenge thriller premise is a mainstay of narrative film storytelling. From Kill Bill to the John Wick franchise to basically every Liam Neeson film from the last twenty years, the box office has proved these films can typically turn a profit. While I used to get a kick out of these types of movies in years past, I find they hold less and less of an interest for me, as my brain leans less toward wanting to be switched off and just enjoying some monsters destroying each other or other monotonous violence and instead favors being engaged on deeper themes and life lessons. The new film Monkey Man from actor turned director Dev Patel is a sleek action thriller with enough violence and blood to soak through even the most plastic covered movie recliners. While the film utilizes some different tactics in setting up and delivering the age old revenge plot, in the end I found mysel
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How To Have Sex - Movie Review

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How To Have Sex - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Our experiences in this life are one of the many components that help shape us into who we are. Both the good and the bad, what we go through and how our minds process these external events mold our personalities as we traverse this human experience. This is just one of the themes that Molly Manning Walker feels like contemplating in the new film that she’s written and directed, How To Have Sex, which is now streaming on Mubi here in the U.S. This film tells us the story of three female friends, probably all in their late teens, as they go for a girls trip/party/vacation, drinking, clubbing and trying to hook up. While simply looking for a good time, they don’t seem to consider how some of the events and decisions made within these few days could reverberate through the rest of their lives. In addition to the the events that shape us, the topics of plutonic female friendship, virginity and one’s los
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Immaculate - Movie Review

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Immaculate - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 The horror film genre has mixed religious themes and church elements together with its scares for decades upon decades. From The Exorcist to modern films like Saint Maud and The Nun films, weaving thrilling elements into the topics of God/Satan, religion, the occult, demons and the supernatural go together like a hand in a glove. The latest film to try its hand at some crazy horror within the realm of a convent of Nuns is Immaculate, a new horror film from Neon studios, starring Sydney Sweeney. The film starts out with it’s eye on the ball of being a straight up thriller with a some startles up it’s sleeve and it works hard to create a eerie atmosphere, putting the audience on edge. But as the second act winds down this film begins to morph into an almost horror/comedy, where some of the line deliveries and gory scenes are fantastically amusing, making me laugh out loud several times. This film might be
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Love Lies Bleeding - Movie Review

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Love Lies Bleeding - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Kristen Stewart is an actress that has continuously been turning in superior performances since her early days working in the Twilight films, which are regularly mocked. Although she almost reverted to her twilight days with her Crimes Of The Future performance, her work in Personal Shopper, Clouds Of Sils Maria and most recently for her Oscar nominated role in Spencer, she has really taken her acting game to the upper tier. Stewart’s latest film drops into theatres this weekend, from A24 studios we get Love Lies Bleeding, where she works with the director Rose Glass, who directed Saint Maud. Although for brief moments through Bleeding we get a few of the Stewart eye flutters and it seems like she may revert to her previous acting style, she keeps it together and manages to sell us on this gym manager from New Mexico. This film is violent as times, sexy in others, very weird in one specific insta
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Dune 2 - Movie Review

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Dune 2 - Movie Review Critics Score - 10 of 10 General Audience Score - 10 of 10 Perfect cinema exists. When Thomas Edison and his assistant William Dickson developed the first kinetograph back in the late 1800’s, they couldn’t have possibly imagined what the medium would unlock for humanity. But sometimes, just sometimes, the human race is given a glimpse of something that we’ve never seen before via this cellulose nitrate vehicle. From the bow of the Titanic to the trenches of World War One, from the surface of the moon to the realm of Middle-Earth, we can now add the desert planet of Arrakis to the places we’ve been transported to thanks to the new film from Denis Villeneuve, Dune 2. The sequel to his prior film which primarily used its runtime to provide exposition to an enormous world and characters, this second part surpasses the first in its splendor and tenacity by getting to the meat of the Frank Herbert novel. And when I say “getting to the meat”, I mean, we feast. This film
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Robot Dreams - Movie Review

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Robot Dreams - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Kids Score - 7 of 10 Isaac Asimov was a Russian science fiction writer who passed away in the early 1990’s. He wrote quite extensively about the future and discussed A.I. and robots in many of his stories. As much of his work was written before our modern world of robot vacuum cleaners and self driving cars, much of Asimov’s work, including a short story called Robot Dreams, was theoretical in nature and speculated on what the future of technology might hold. The book Robot Dreams inspired the movie, I, Robot starring Will Smith from a couple decades ago, but the new film from Neon with the same name, Robot Dreams, dabbles in Asimov’s speculative ideas about what a Robot intelligence might “dream” about. This film is a relatively simple story of a dog in search of a friend, so he purchases a robot and assembles him. But all the adventures and experiences the dog and robot have mirror real life and the
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The Teacher’s Lounge - Movie Review

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The Teacher’s Lounge - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Most of us can remember what it was like to be in grade school. There was always some Tommy likes Sally type of drama between pubescent boys and girls, but rarely were there incidents of any note that got the whole school on high alert. Most of those types of dramas are saved for the unfortunate circumstances when a child brought a weapon to school or there were accusations of sexual misconduct. Well, the new German film The Teacher’s Lounge explores the topic of a theft in a middle school that threatens to send the entirety of the school, teachers and admin as well as many of the students, into a tailspin. This film at just over a hour and a half flies by as the dominoes fall, one after the other, in a series of events that make up some of best drama you can find onscreen. While a school theft is nothing new, this film extracts every ounce of chaos from its premise, contemplating all angles an
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The Peasants - Movie Review

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The Peasants - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 When it comes to paintings and art, I’m not a huge connoisseur. I can walk through an art gallery and appreciate most pieces from a technical level, but as far as anything I would purchase and own for my own personal enjoyment, most things I’m pretty indifferent to. A new animated film that’s being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics is The Peasants; and it is also the Polish submission to the Oscars this year. This breathtaking foreign language film is presented in a real life, oil painted animation style, each frame of it’s nearly two hour runtime is as gorgeous as most works you could find on display at any art gallery. It tells the story of a time when, you guessed it, peasants and small villages were the norm, sometime dating to the late 19th century, about a hundred and fifty years ago. The Polish peasants in our story and society in general at the time were held by a strong patriarchal culture
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My Top 10 Films of 2023

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My Top 10 Films of 2023 #1 - Perfect Days Critics Score - 9.4 of 10 Wim Wenders’ new film Perfect Days was about as close to a perfect film as I saw for the entirely of the 2023 year in cinema. This slower film won’t be as captivating for general audiences, but it’s thematic riches are there for the taking. At least for those willing to take the time to sift for them. Wenders is speaking to a society of have it all and give it to me now about a minimalist man who has very little and aspires to gain nothing. He’s not in a hurry to get anywhere in life, no corporate ladder to climb and is instead focused on soaking in the beauty of each moment of this life that he can. The lead performance from Koji Yakusho helps to set this film on a pedestal of incredible filmmaking that no other movie has topped for myself. This Japanese foreign film is fully deserving of it’s nomination for Best International Feature at the 2023 Academy Awards. #2 - Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Critics Score
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