Hollywood Reviews
Dave Canfield's Favorite Film Books of 2019
Film-related books are a joy to behold and hold. Typically oversized and heavily illustrated, they allow a languorous exploration of their subject that no broadcast media or online experience does. Held in the lap, they invite physical and mental pauses, and...
Review: BAD BOYS FOR LIFE, These Bad Boys Are Now Grumpy Old Men
It's not an easy thing to pick up a franchise sixteen years after the last entry, especially when so much has changed in the interim. The two Bad Boys films left inedible marks on their times, with the first film...
Review: VHYES, A Jolt Cola Induced Surreal Flashback To The Analog Days Of Yore
The '80s were a wild time to grow up. Technology blooming all around us in new and bizarre ways created entire new types of obsession for adolescents. The mass proliferation of home recording devices gave rise to the VHS tape...
Blu-ray Review: BODY PARTS Will Have You in Pieces
The early 1990s was still the 1980s, really. Not just in terms of music, but clothes and films, too. Bombastic touches in special effects as well as in storytelling often went along with pleated pants, stonewashed jeans, shoulder pads, and...
Review: UNDERWATER, Monsters Stalk A Drilling Rig At The Bottom Of The Ocean
There's nothing quite as terrifying as the unknown. For centuries scientists and fiction writers have speculated about the mysterious realms beyond our terrestrial homes, both above and below the surface. There is something about the darkness of space and the...
Now Streaming: TOGO, Of Dafoe and a Dog
Willem Dafoe and Julianne Nicholson star in the dramatic adventure, based on a true story. Ericson Core directed.
Review: Criterion's WHEN WE WERE KINGS Kills it on Blu-ray
When We Were Kings is an undeniably lean and mean piece of work; hard-hitting but not an attack, genuine while showcasing a grand hullabaloo. Boxing! Music! Ali! Foreman! Black power! Cinema power! In its tight eighty-eight-minute runtime, we casually witness the...
Blu-ray Review: THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE
The Criterion Collection has recently released The Story of Temple Drake, a film that was essentially lost to quite a few of us. It was adapted from the notorious William Faulkner novel "Sanctuary," and directed by Stephen Roberts (who made nearly...
Blu-ray Review: SILVER BULLET Shoots for the Heart
It's been a long, long time since I've seen the strange werewolf adaptation of Stephen King's novella, "Cycle of the Werewolf." Like many kids in the '80s, I'm sure, I saw this film way too young. There were images that...
Review: JUST MERCY, Infuriating As It May Be
Michael B. Jordan, Brie Larson, and Jamie Foxx star in the real-life legal drama, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton.
Blu-ray Review: BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA
Shout! Factory's genre label Scream Factory has become the Blu-ray home of legendary filmmaker John Carpenter as of the last few years, and the latest release is the kung-fu action flick Big Trouble in Little China. Made just before lead...
Review: STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER Is Mired in the Past
J.J. Abrams returns to direct Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Oscar Issac and Daisy Ridley.
Review: BLACK CHRISTMAS, Ass-Kicking Horror Heroines for a New Generation
I wish I could explain to people how exhausting it is sometimes to be a woman. To know how much we have to explain and justify our very existence. How everything we say or do is met with scepticism at...
Review: JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL, New Adventures Await Old Heroes In This Satisfying Sequel
Okay, you got me. I'm an easy mark for the crowd-pleasing antics of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. While the Jumanji franchise is very clearly an ensemble driven enterprise, it's Johnson who looms largest on screen, both figuratively and literally. It's...
Review: THE AERONAUTS, Come Fly with Felicity and Eddie
Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne reunite for a high-flying adventure, directed by Tom Harper.
Now Streaming: A NASTY PIECE OF WORK Takes INTO THE DARK Home for a Comic Break
Julian Sands, Dustin Milligan, Angela Serafyan, Kyle Howard, Molly Hagen and Natalie Hall star in Hulu's horror series; Charles Hood directs.
Blu-ray Review: ALL ABOUT EVE Shines
Back in 1950, famed Hollywood director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Dragonwyck, Suddenly, Last Summer) released the soon-to-be-classic tale of stardom and backstabbing, All About Eve. The film won a whopping six Academy Awards and garnered another 17...
Review: KNIVES OUT, Masterful Whodunit & Political Satire
Daniel Craig leads an all-star cast in Rian Johnson's love letter to Classic Mysteries
Review: FROZEN II, Cold to the Touch Yet Still Irresistible
Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel and Josh Gad return for a hotly-anticipated sequel.
Review: CHARLIE'S ANGELS, Refashioning What Action Means
Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska star in the action-adventure, directed by Elizabeth Banks.
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