Category: Reviews
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Review: ‘The Family Plan’
Mark Wahlberg Stays In His Comfort Zone As Suburban Dad And Elite Assassin In Apple’s Forgettable Action-Comedy
Mark Wahlberg continues to occupy just the weirdest space for middle-aged action stars. He could probably be commanding his own blockbuster franchise, like Tom Cruise does, but instead he’s given his career over to playing the hot dad with great biceps and ripped abs, domesticated dudes who used to have thrilling lives but have settled…
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Review: ‘The End We Start From’
Jodie Comer Mesmerizes As A Mother Fleeing A Climate Catastrophe
The End We Start From is a post-apocalyptic survival thriller…but then it’s also not. There are no large-scale, massive displays of cataclysmic damage. No meteors hurling towards Earth, or other acts of destruction. Roland Emmerich wouldn’t know what to do with a small-scale, intimate story as this, which centers on a woman, a new mother,…
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Review: ‘American Fiction’
Jeffrey Wright Leaves Them Bamboozled In Funny, Insightful Satire About Plight Of The Black Writer
*NOTE: This review was originally part of our Middleburg Film Festival coverage.* In 1985, Robert Townsend offered one of the most insightful, and funniest looks at the relationship between art and Black culture with Hollywood Shuffle. The film followed a Black actor who struggled with staying true to himself, or “selling out” and pandering to a…
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Review: ‘The Shift’
Sean Astin And Neal McDonough Star In A Multiverse Movie For The Faith-Based Crowd
It seems nowadays pretty much every movie has to do with the multiverse in some form. It’s kind of no surprise given that last year’s Best Picture winner was Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. DC’s tackled the multiverse on both the big and small screen, and Marvel’s pretty much going to tackle the multiverse for…
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Review: ‘A Creature Was Stirring’
Damien LeVeck Attempts To Put Chrissy Metz Through Yuletide Frights This Holiday Season
Christmas-themed horror generally tends to be hit or miss for me. Aside from a few standouts throughout the years it’s not a genre that I actively seek out, but when I read the synopsis for A Creature Was Stirring my interest was piqued. Hosting a cast of some familiar names and helmed by Damien LeVeck,…
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Review: ‘Fast Charlie’
Pierce Brosnan Is Charming As Hell As A Seasoned Hitman Out For Revenge
We’ve seen the “one last job” movies featuring the “I’m too old for this shit” protagonist before, however in director Phillip Noyce’s latest comedy/thriller Fast Charlie, the genre gets spun on its head to be an entertaining film about a hitman trying to settle some scores after his world caves in around him. Charlie (Pierce…
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Review: ‘Poor Things’
Emma Stone Grows Up In Yorgos Lanthimos’ Surreal Feminist Fairy Tale
Poor Things is being compared to Frankenstein a lot. While its novel of the same name (written by Alasdair Gray) is meant to be a feminist retelling of the Mary Shelley story, people forget that the latter first published anonymously in order to be taken seriously as a writer. It is speculated that the story…
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Review: ‘The Boy And The Heron’
Hayao Miyazaki’s Comeback Film Will Be A Soulful, Familiar Treat To Studio Ghibli Fans
Nine years ago legendary Studio Ghibli animator Hayao Miyazaki “retired” with his final film, a perfect magnum opus in The Wind Rises. It told a real-life story of ingenuity, creativity, and genius put to the benefit of others, and it exemplified everything about Miyazaki’s storied career, while echoing aspects of his life. Almost immediately reports surfaced…