THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE Review: Real-Life WWII Superspies Get the Guy Ritchie Treatment
With three films in four years, Guy Ritchie (Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, The Wrath of Man) has proven himself nothing if not prolific, specifically of broadly appealing, easily digestible, ultimately forgettable entertainments. As surface-deep as...
Calgary Underground 2024: Curtain Raiser
The Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) opens its 21st edition today, and runs until April 28th. Western Canada's largest showcase of genre film, offbeat documentaries, and industry events is housed in the two-screen (stacked on top of one another) Globe Cinema in the...
SASQUATCH SUNSET Review: Sometimes Comical, Sometimes Profound, Sometimes Meaningful
Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg star in a new film by directors David and Nathan Zellner.
THE FIRST OMEN Review: Religious Horror Undermined by Prequelitis
Just because IP (intellectual property) has gone dormant doesn’t mean it’s dead. As long as there’s a rights-holder with profit on their individual and collective minds, the figurative and literal resurrection of a series or franchise remains an open, even...
GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE Review: The Fifth Time Is Not the Charm
Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and a few OGs star in Gil Kenan's action comedy.
ROAD HOUSE Review: Jake G. and His Abs Almost Make You Forget the Original
Minutes into Doug Liman’s not entirely unwelcome remake, Elwood Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal), fresh off of beating several bikers into bloody, messy pulps, politely offers to drive them to a nearby hospital. Like viewers on the other side of the digital screen,...
ARTHUR THE KING Review: Adorable Dog Outshines Wahlberg in Inspirational Drama
In Mark Wahlberg’s latest inspirational drama, Arthur the King, Wahlberg’s character, Michael Light, finds himself face-to-face with the end of his career in adventure racing, an ultra-niche sport that involves running, biking, climbing, and kayaking across rough terrain, and hundreds of...
IMAGINARY Review: Tiresome Compendium of Horror Genre Cliches
Filled with stock scares, stock plot turns, and stock set pieces, Imaginary, writer-director Jeff Wadlow’s (Fantasy Island, Kick-Ass 2, Never Back Down) latest enfeebled effort, stumbles from its first moments through its last shot before the end credits mercifully roll...
KUNG FU PANDA 4 Review: Fourth Entry Falls Short of Its Predecessors
While the Kung Fu Panda series has been noticeably offscreen for the better part of a decade, it’s survived and thrived via three, small-screen series, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, The Paws of Destiny, and The Dragon Knight, each,...
DAMSEL Review: Millie Bobby Brown Stars in Middling Dark Fantasy
At 20, Millie Bobbie Brown, the erstwhile breakout star of Netflix’s Stranger Things, has co-starred in two kaiju-themed blockbusters (Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla: King of the Monsters), and not only headlined two made-for-Netflix young-adult adventure-dramas, Enola Holmes I and II...
LOVE LIES BLEEDING Review: Queer Neo-Noir Enters Uncharted Territory
Kristen Stewart, Katy O'Brian, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, and Ed Harris star in writer/director Rose Glass' film.
BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE Review: Conventional Biopic for Unconventional Musical Genius
Whenever the famous son of a famous singer, songwriter, and musician appears onscreen to extoll the authenticity of his late, revered father’s biopic, largely thanks to his family’s intimate involvement in every aspect of production, there’s a better-than-average chance that...
LISA FRANKENSTEIN Review: 80s Goth Throwback Disappoints, Underwhelms
Losing a parental figure, biological or otherwise, as a teen can have long-term, lifelong effects, most of them related to the initial, life-changing trauma. Losing the same parent to an axe-wielding intruder can double or triple that trauma, but in...
Sundance 2024 Review: LITTLE DEATH, Ambitious, Unconventional, Must-See Filmmaking
There’s a make-it-or-break-it moment in writer-director Jack Begert’s boldly unconventional, existential drama/Hollywood satire, Little Death, that will leave audiences cringing in shock, wonder, and maybe awe. Some might even head for the exits. Coming as it does at roughly the...
Sundance 2024 Review: WINNER, Comic-Absurdist Biopic Succeeds Where Others Have Failed
The second narrative film and the third overall in almost as many years to cover similar, if not identical ground, Winner, a comedy-drama/biopic centered on the uniquely named Reality Winner, the ex-U.S. Air Force veteran, translator extraordinaire, and NSA whistleblower,...
Sundance 2024 Review: WILL & HARPER, Road Trip Doc Engages, Enlightens, Educates
When comedian and actor Will Farrell learned that his longtime friend and onetime Saturday Night Live (SNL) head writer Harper Steele had come out as a trans woman at the age of 61, he, like most of us on the...
Sundance 2024 Review: A DIFFERENT MAN, Idea-Rich Genre Mash-Up Stumbles, Falls, Dissatisfies
In Aaron Schimberg’s (Chained for Life, Go Down South) latest film, A Different Man, Edward (Sebastian Stan), a man euphemistically described as “facially different,” finds himself unmoored from the life he once had and rejected and the life he thought...
Sundance 2024 Review: HIT MAN, Richard Linklater Directs Glen Powell in a Morally Relativistic Comedy-Drama
To hear Glen Powell tell the story, he decided to become an actor and writer on Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation. It wasn’t his first or second role. It was his third. A not particularly significant part, it was more...
Sundance 2024 Review: IT'S WHAT'S INSIDE, Leave Your (College) Friends Behind
The friends we make in high school and college often aren’t the friends we keep. Good reasons abound as to why friendships don’t carry over 10, 20, or 30 years, but the key one, the “why” or “whys” friendships form...
Sundance 2024 Review: BETWEEN THE TEMPLES, A Cantor Finds His Voice In Life and Love
Trauma in all its facets -- experience, understanding, reconciliation -- and indie dramas are practically synonymous at this point. That, however, doesn’t make trauma or its natural consequence, mourning, or how it’s explored through film, any less relevant or meaningful....
