My Favorite Movies: The Original Star Wars Trilogy (1977-1983)
It is nearly impossible to see this as [...]
Sci-Fi/Fantasty
The Midnight Sky (2020)
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I have not been able to go to movie theaters nor film festivals. So now, with the help of award-season screeners, this month I am catching up. What happened to George Clooney? More than ten years ago he started his directorial career with two brilliant bio-pics, Confessions of a Dangerous […]
Aquaman (2018)
Aquaman is quite possibly the most ridiculous big-budget movie that I’ve seen in at least the last five years and I swear I mean that with affection. Yes, it is ridiculous but in a common-sense sort of way. I mean, this is the the story of a displaced half-human, half-Atlantean ruler of an undersea kingdom […]
Bird Box (2018)
Is Bird Box the victim of bad timing? Watching the movie today on Netflix, I kept wondering if my opinion might have been so sour if the movie hadn’t come out in the shadow of other, better end-of-the world thrillers from 2018 like A Quiet Place, Heredity and Annihilation. Right now, when conversation turns to […]
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
When Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ended, I sat in my second-row seat staring at the rolling credits with a feeling of general puzzlement. I’m a pretty attentive movie-goer but I wondered if I had missed something. I wondered if there was a line of dialogue or a plot point that blew by me amid all […]
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Most people attending Solo: A Star Wars Story will do so this weekend more out of curiosity than anything else. Han Solo is arguably the most popular character in this series’ overstuffed cannon, but his origins are his least interesting aspect. Does his background really matter? Do you care where he came from? Do you […]
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
A little less than an hour before sitting down to write this review, a lady asked me “Would the new Avengers movie make any sense to someone who hasn’t seen the other movies in this series?” My quick answer is simple: “Yes, but it won’t mean as much to you because you don’t know the […]
Ready Player One (2018)
Ready Player One credits itself as being based on the 2011 book by Ernest Cline and, in fact, it lovingly retrofits the book’s overstuffed narrative to a visual style that is so overcrowded with nostalgic tentpoles that it asks – practically begs – that you see it twice to take it all in. Home video […]
Pacific Rim Uprising (2018)
As I enter into my positive comments on Pacific Rim Uprising, I do so with the realization that I’m kind of a lone wolf here. Nearly all of my fellow critics seem to deride this sequel with a hate and vitriol that, given the fact that Guillermo del Toro isn’t at the helm, might have […]
