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Showing posts from March, 2023

Tetris - Movie Review

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Tetris - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 After the massive hits Pong and then Super Mario Bros. for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, the game Tetris took the video game world by storm in the late 1980’s. The game was as simple as it was addictive, it could be picked up and played within a few moments, and it sparked a sensation across the entire globe. Who knew that at the beginning of this video game there was a Soviet Union controlled company and a Cold War era controversy while companies and game developers tried to get their hands on the licenses to the hit bestseller before it was introduced to the public. The new film Tetris debuts on Apple+ on March 31st, it stars Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, a businessman who saw the potential and went hardcore after the game, jeopardizing everything as he traveled into Russia during a time when foreigners weren’t exactly welcomed. While no doubt some of the events were sensationalized, a car ch

Boston Strangler - Movie Review

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Boston Strangler - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 In the early 1960’s, in Boston, Massachusetts, a series of murders took place over the period of about a year and a half. Thirteen women were killed, their ages ranged from nineteen to eighty-five. One of the main things the murders had in common was the fact that the women were strangled to death, most of the time with their nylon stockings. A new film from 20th Century Fox, Boston Strangler, just dropped onto Hulu and it delves into the murders but focuses on the journalists covering the story and in some ways doing police work on the case behind the scenes. These two real women, Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole, worked tirelessly and against the grain in a male dominated workplace and broke open aspects of the story that deserve recognition. While this movie plays out like a journalism story, we follow the duo as they chase down clues and suspects, like Spotlight or the newer She Said, it also i

Cocaine Bear - Movie Review

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Cocaine Bear - Movie Review Critics Score - 6 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 I’ve seen a lot of quote unquote “dumb” movies in my time and I use the term dumb very loosely. But needless to say, there are some dumb movies that are really truly ingenious, from Airplane to Dumb And Dumber to Borat, some of the perceived ignorance on display is actually highly thought out and intelligent. There’s plenty of moments of subjectively “pure stupidity” in cinema that are also some of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen. Sometimes the dumbest things can be pure comedic genius. A new movie just released a couple weeks ago that’s title alone shouts “dumb fun”, and you can’t help but snicker at the goofy aesthetics of the poster and the tag line that tells you exactly what you’re in for, “Get In Line”. We get Cocaine Bear from director Elizabeth Banks, whose humorous directing sensibilities make for a decently enjoyable time with this latest effort. Fortunately there’s more fun here tha

Athena - Movie Review

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Athena - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 In the world of Ancient Greece, as a daughter of Zeus, Athena was known as being the goddess of wisdom and war, among her many qualities. While she is most commonly associated with the capital city of Greece, Athens, the name Athena is also an area in the city of Paris where the fictional events from a new film take place. Athena is a primarily French language film that debuted on Netflix last September without much fanfare that many audiences are just now catching up with after France went with Saint Omer for its submission to this years Oscars. Athena is a roller coaster ride of a movie, and if you can tell anything from the incredible poster, being named after the goddess of war is no small coincidence. This films is like Avatar The Way Of Water in that it is a complete spectacle of filmmaking, but the story, while engaging in the moment, is somewhat shallow and because it doesn’t spend enough time with t