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Aftersun - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 5 of 10 The father/daughter relationship is something I cannot speak to with experience, as currently a father of two sons, my dream of walking a daughter down the isle one day is likely to go unfulfilled. But I can only imagine the sweat, blood and tears that could and do go into keeping a little girl safe and ready to take on the world when she comes of age. A few of the elements and nuances of raising a daughter in this day and age are addressed in the new A24 film from writer/director Charlotte Wells, Aftersun. This is an intimate character study about a father spending time with his pre-teen daughter over what we suppose to be her summer vacation. Charlotte wisely leaves many aspects of the story ambiguous, we’re simply here to spend time with a father and daughter as they snorkel, sunbathe and strengthen a fragile bond that so many mistakes in life are capable of loosening. It’s a heartwarming story that man...

Resurrection - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 When it comes to the Academy Awards and Oscar contenders, especially in the varying acting races, the horror genre is regularly and inexplicably ignored. As a shining example, Lupita Nyong’o was passed over by the Oscar awards body for Best Actress when her two-fold performance in Us from 2018 was undeniably one of the best performances of the year, possibly among the best of the decade. This year we’ll be in the same exact scenario with Rebecca Hall, a severely underrated actress that’s been churning out great performances for years, who stars in the new thriller/horror film from IFC, Resurrection. When I tell you, Hall is unbelievably good in this movie, I’m probably making an understatement. I’ve immediately placed her at the top of my personal Best Actress performances of the year, albeit without still having seen many of the supposed contenders as of this writing. While the film around Hall doesn’...

Men - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 5 of 10 What does the phrase Deus Ex Machina mean? It comes from Latin origins and has the general meaning of “god out of a machine”. It’s a reference to a mechanism of storytelling, used to refer to an unexpected plot device that gets someone out of a tight spot. An example of this would be the Tyrannosaurus Rex appearing suddenly at the end of Jurassic Park to prevent the velociraptors from eating our main characters. Back in 2014 we got a little film from debut director Alex Garland called Ex Machina, a fantastic piece of filmmaking, which he followed up with Annihilation in 2018 and earlier this year with the new A24 film Men. If you’ve seen any of Garland’s films, you know the formulaic storytelling of the major studio films is not his thing, his visionary filmmaking is exciting and fresh. The Deus Ex Machina plot contrivances of a genie appearing in the cave of wonders to save Aladdin isn’t what you should expect...

Good Luck To You, Leo Grande - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 General Audience Score - 7 As we exit the summer and enter the fall, the movie industry changes gears and we movie from mainstream blockbuster films to more smaller films that have their eyes on Oscar award potential. When it comes to Best Actress in 2023, Cate Blanchett in Tar, Ana De Armas in Blonde and maybe if the multiverse aligns, Michelle Yeoh from Everything Everywhere All At Once will be among the names of those hopeful to snag a nomination. Without a doubt, one name that should be included in this conversation is Emma Thompson for her portrayal of Nancy Stokes in Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. Thompson is delightful alongside the also impressive Daryl McCormack in this intimate character study of a middle aged woman in search of some bedroom adventures that she’s never known. This film is now available to stream on Hulu and from the opening moments as Thompson slips out of her flats and into a sexier dress shoe, we’...

Three Thousand Years Of Longing - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 5 of 10 When the Australian writer, director, producer and editor George Miller started working on films back in the 1970’s, he started out small but then he finally hit pay dirt 1979 with Mel Gibson in a little film called Mad Max. Miller collaborated with Gibson twice on Mad Max sequels but in 2015 released another Max Max film, Mad Max Fury Road, which is generally considered one of the greatest action movies of all time. His follow up to that masterpiece of filmmaking is narratively a bit off the beaten path, Three Thousand Years Of Longing, a new film featuring Idris Elba as a djinn, or as they’re commonly referred to in the U.S., a genie. Tilda Swinton is an academic who finds the bootle he inhabits and releases him. This film is engaging, interesting, stylistic and downright weird. I was never bored. The first two acts work exceptionally well from a narrative standpoint but then the f...

Bodies Bodies Bodies - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 9 of 10 Cinephiles readily recognize the studio name A24, but general audiences may not be as aware of this newer film studio, like if you were to say, “the new A24 film”, many would say “what’s that?”. Well, A24 is a movie studio and distributor that has become a mainstay in the world of art house, eclectic and foreign movies and has generally solid filmmaking standards. While they love the horror film genre over there at A24, I haven’t seen them handle many films specifically like their new movie, Bodies Bodies Bodies. It’s more of a Knives Out type of film, a stylish who-dun-it that skews heavily towards a Gen-Z demographic with it’s brilliant cast of younger actors and actresses. Despite it’s appeal to youth, in much the same way Knives Out delivered a combination of suspense and laughs, Bodies Bodies Bodies leaves a trail of murder, mystery and hilarity in it’s wake that will leave audiences of al...

Prey - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 I can still remember the first time I watched the original Predator film, I was on vacation at a hotel and we were watching TNT or TBS or one of those cable channels, for those that remember cable television. The sequence of Bill Duke seeing an invisible creature in the jungle, grabbing that minigun and firing it like crazy, Arnold Schwarzenegger and company joining in and shooting the crap out of the jungle is all still indelibly etched on my memory. From that film, the Predator IP has spawned a couple sequels and a few other iterations of the property as well as some films that tried to stitch the Alien and Predator franchises together. But now 20th Century Fox has unceremoniously dropped the new film Prey, a prequel of sorts for the franchise, onto the Hulu streaming service. The director Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) clearly has an eye for the the sci-fi genre, even though this film plays almost l...

Luck - Movie Review Critics Score - 5 of 10 General Audience Score - 5 of 10 Kids Score - 6 of 10 In it’s efforts to reel in subscribers, Apple+ has been getting some pretty great TV shows with some impressive quality in the last year or so. On the movie front, they still have only a handful of original films, some better than others, but they did get Coda, the Best Picture winner from last year to add some clout to their lineup. They now are getting their first digitally animated film, after the wonderfully hand drawn animated Wolfwalkers from a couple years ago, Luck debuts as their first fully CG film. Unfortunately the movie fails to impress on both the animated front as well as much of the story and screenwriting elements. The Skydance Animation studio behind the film clearly had aspirations of an Inside Out part two, but to compare Luck to Inside Out would be an atrocity. While the film struggled just to be average in most every way, to compare it to Pixar’s Lightyear from a coup...

Cha Cha Real Smooth - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Cooper Raiff is an up and coming writer, director and producer in Hollywood that general audiences will start to notice soon. After critics responded well to his debut film S#!% House back in 2020, he’s back for another round with Cha Cha Real Smooth. After debuting back at the Sundance Film Festival, which is where I got to see it in January, and after winning the U.S. Dramatic Competition Audience Award, Apple purchased Cha Cha for a reported $15 million dollar price tag. It just dropped into theatres and streaming on Apple+ last month, and while it’s ultimately a film about, life, love and heartache, general audiences and critics alike can enjoy the melancholic emotional beats the movies hits. The humor, likeable characters and their relationships that the screenplay gives us to work with are well above average and they make this romantic drama/comedy one of the better ones I’ve seen in a whi...

The Sea Beast - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Kids Score - 7 of 10 When it comes to kids movies, getting and holding a child’s interest is not an easy task. As a father of a seven year old with ADHD and a ten year old with autism, unless they’re already familiar with the characters on the screen from the opening scene, getting them to stick around for a full length feature film can be quite a challenge. The new digitally animated film from Netflix, The Sea Beast, as an independent IP, with children not being familiar with any of the characters or story, is up against it from the opening scene. Fortunately for my viewing experience, this film was up to the challenge, with a great sense of pirate ship sailing, animated sea monsters attacking, swashbuckling adventures to be had right out of the gate. The opening had me harkening back to the beginning of The Little Mermaid and the song Fathoms Below or how the opening of Frozen with the Frozen Heart ...