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Showing posts from January, 2022

Hatching - Quick Movie Review

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Hatching - Quick Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 A new thriller/horror film from the countries of Finland and Sweden called Hatching just debuted at Sundance and gets a wider release in April. This film has quite a few practical effects, a nice creepy atmosphere and lots of blood and gore. While the film doesn’t stick the landing, the first act and the setup are quite enthralling and this Hatching winds up being a perfectly decent little creature feature. Our tale of the largest order of eggs Benedict ever starts with a family of four, a mom and dad, their daughter Tinja and her brother Matias. The mother is recording videos of her perfect family for her blog but things start to go awry when a black crow flies into the living room and starts breaking vases and knocking glass fixtures down. They subdue the crow but then the mother breaks it’s neck and Tinja takes it outside to the trash. But during the night, she wakes up and goes out to find the cr

Alice - Quick Movie Review

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Alice - Quick Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Alice is a new film that is inspired by actual events and I promise you, you’ve never seen anything like this movie on a screen before. It’s crazy, harrowing, fantastic fun. The movie is a tight hour an a half run with one of the most unbelievable plot curve balls I’ve seen, probably in a couple years. Alice begins with two slaves, Joseph and Alice (Keke Palmer), as they get married on a plantation in Georgia. Soon we get a glimpse of what life is like when the land owner, Paul, starts beating Joseph for catching a rabbit when he’s supposed to be cutting sugar cane. A bit later Joseph is told that he’ll be heading to another plantation to inseminate the other slave owner’s “domestics”, as the slaves are referred to. Meanwhile Alice cooks, feeds and cleans at Paul’s big colonial home and, let’s just say, she’s forced to take care of his sexual needs. Without getting into spoilers, the story takes some wi

Flee - Movie Review

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Flee - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 We’ve all been in situations we wanted to escape from like destructive relationships, financial hardships, exploitive jobs and algebra tests. Now imagine that situation is the oppressive country you live in. The new film Flee is coming to video on demand in most areas this month and it is the story of a refugee, a man that is forced to flee his home country of Afghanistan. While Flee is an international feature film, it’s in spoken Danish, viewers should prepare for some reading, but given you’re reading this, it seems like you’re up for the challenge. It’s understandable that being in a foreign language as well as being a documentary are two strikes against this film for many general audiences before it even gets into the cue. Despite some drawbacks, there’s no need to run away from Flee, it’s an excellent and important piece of cinema, the only fleeing likely to happen is when you run to grab your handkerchi

The Tragedy Of Macbeth - Movie Review

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The Tragedy Of Macbeth - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 4 of 10 If you ever took a classic literature course in college, the name of William Shakespeare may have come up a time or two. He was born in England, lived from 1564 to 1616 and is widely considered one of, if not the greatest writer of all time. The new black and white film from one half of the Coen Brothers, Joel Coen, tackles one of the more popular plays from Shakespeare, The Tragedy Of Macbeth. This film is really something, in many ways this film is easy to be entertained by, in one massive way this film is terribly difficult to enjoy. This massive way I reference is in the screenplay and dialogue, it sticks closely to the old English the play was originally written in. That makes The Tragedy Of Macbeth almost like a foreign language film, only instead of subtitles you can understand, the subtitles only reinforce what you’re already confused by. While the performances are on point and the ci

The Lost Daughter - Movie Review

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The Lost Daughter - Movie Review Critics Score - 6 of 10 General Audience Score - 5 of 10 Brother and sister Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal have been appearing in movies since the early 1990’s and have each went on to have successful careers in Hollywood. Jake has  become one of the biggest actors on the big screen and Maggie has played in her share of films, but recently she’s decided to try her hand at directing. The new film The Lost Daughter has debuted on Netflix and Maggie shows some competence behind the camera instead of in front of it. Although Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley do some fine work, ultimately the screenplay Maggie herself adapted from the book of the same name fails to build momentum or tie plot lines together in any satisfying way. Like another 2021 debut director, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film Tick Tick Boom, it’s easy to spot that this is a first time effort from Gyllenhaal. It’s very passable work to be sure, you can sense her vision must’ve been clear, but with wha

Mass - Movie Review

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Mass - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 There’s a city out in Utah that resides exactly seven thousand feet above sea level, it’s called Park City. This town is one you might have heard of if you’re big into skiing or alternatively movies, as it is the home of The Sundance Film Festival. At the end of each January, filmmakers the world over will display hundreds of films to the hungry eyes of cinephiles that stream into the small town. Last January one of the biggest hits to roll into Sundance was actually a little film that only now mainstream audiences are getting to feast their eyes on, Mass. Without getting into too much of this film, I will say it is not just engaging, it’s riveting, it’s enthralling. Once the film kicks into top gear as it moves into the second act, there’s no turning away from the screen. The subject material is dense and heavy, the atmosphere is suffocating, the tone of the film is foreboding. There’s four key players and th