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Weapons (2025) ★ ★

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  Sometimes movies are pleasant surprises, but more often they turn out to be dull slogs, at least these days. " Weapons," the sophomore film by "Barbarian" director Zach Cregger, unfolds in the eerie town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, where seventeen third-graders vanish in unison at exactly 2:17 a.m., triggering suspicion toward their teacher (Julia Garner) and touching off interwoven, character-driven chapters featuring Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan as a chilling relative with supernatural intent. Garner’s haunted, morally fraught turn anchors the story’s psychological core, while Madigan steals scenes with a performance that blends menace, dark humor, and mythic dread, garnering early awards buzz. Critics praise the film’s bold, anthology-style structure, its ambiguous, discussion-provoking finale, and its capability to be both terrifying and emotionally resonant. While some viewers cite thematic or emotional unevenness in its latter...
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Longlegs (2024) ★ ★

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I went into this movie thinking of the only true horror film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, "The Silence of the Lambs," and expected writer/director Osgood Perkins to deliver. The son of Anthony Perkins ("Psycho") and Berry Berenson ("Remember My Name"), Perkins has filmmaking in his blood, so my hope that he would move the ball forward from Jonathan Demme's 1991 classic seemed a reasonable one. Instead, "Longlegs" turned out to be a massive disappointment.  All the right fixins' are here: good cast (Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood), good cinematography (Andés Arochi), good sound design (Joe Dzuban and Zach Seivers), and good idea -- make Cage a monster, Buffalo Bill style. Yet somehow the film falls flat and lacks substance, dimension, animus, and most of all, scares. There is much ado about "Longlegs" in the online film community, with many hailing it as "almost perfect" and "the scariest ...
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Godzilla Minus One, Minus Color (2024) ★ ★ ★★

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Image is property of Toho Studios,   TOHOスタジオ株式会社 "Because, my war isn't over yet."  This line, delivered by Ryuunosuke Kamiki, defines "Godzilla Minus One" (2023). Set at the end of World War II, the film portrays his character as a haggard symbol of the pathos of postwar Japan, a nation wracked by defeat at the hands of Western nuclear might. He is a failed kamikaze pilot who defected in a very un-Japanese and dishonorable way from his very Japanese and honorable suicide mission to hide out at a military repair-shop called Odo Island, and is immediately met with the quiet judgment of his peers; yes, the war is obviously over, and has been definitively lost, but still, he should have obeyed orders.  I viewed this film from a limited lens of having only seen one Godzilla movie in my life: "King Kong vs. Godzilla" (1962), an orgy of model train crashes and corner-store sparklers that I watched on a loop as a kid. It has been widely hailed as the worst o...
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Pulp Fiction (1994) ★ ★ ★

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I've seen "Pulp Fiction" seven times, and with each viewing, my enthusiasm for it has diminished. It is widely hailed as Quentin Tarantino's best movie, thanks to its star-studded cast and flawless technical execution, but there are a few things about it that trouble me. These concerns may have seemed trivial back in 1994, but the director's subsequent career has largely validated my impressions. My primary concern with "Pulp Fiction" is its failure to achieve what every critic claims it accomplished: a convincing non-linear narrative style. Many directors have imitated its fractured approach to storytelling, most to better effect (Christopher Nolan's "Memento" is one famous example), and many utilized it because their stories benefitted from it, which isn't the case with "Pulp Fiction."  The film famously arrays its events out of sequence, to impress on audiences that its three main stories are interconnected within a single ...
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INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023) ★ ★ ★

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The more I see of Indiana Jones in the 21st century, the more I think he was better off staying in the 1980s, where he belongs. When George Lucas and Steven Spielberg conjured up this testosterone-fueled character all those decades ago, he was ostensibly a "hero," but in reality he was a cold-blooded cad. Indy wasn't a "nice guy" just out to find hidden treasure; he was a determined mercenary who could kill a roomful of men and sit down to eat a bowl of cornflakes right after. Whether he was throwing a kebab skewer through a guy's chest or shooting a sword fighter in a town square to save time, Jones meant business.  Fast forward to 2008, and we got a taste of an older and weirder version of Indiana Jones in a film that should never have been made. After seeing it, all I could think was, "Well, at least the movie is unaware of how bad it is." Spielberg couldn't leave well enough alone, and had to revive a character that had left audiences with ...
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65 (2023) ★ ★

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A movie about two human-like space explorers who crash land on prehistoric Earth should be an interesting way to spend ninety minutes. Instead it's a disappointing slog. I can't remember the last time a film pissed me off so much."65" has some moments of intrigue, and it's a visual bonanza of eye-catching scenes, but somehow nothing saves it from being boring. Or, rather, nothing saves it from itself.  Adam Driver plays Mills, and his character is needlessly complicated, right from the start. He leaves behind a wife Alya (Nika King) and sick daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman). The mission that drives this story is to venture into the stars and find an off-world "cure" for Nevine, but judging by the strained expressions on their faces when they discuss it, her parents don't seem to think that this is likely to happen. Why did the writing and directing duo, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, feel it necessary to add this forlorn family drama backstory? It's ...
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ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET. (2023) ★ ★ ★ ★

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Great stories deal with big themes, things like personal growth (the hero's journey), love, hatred, war, religion, death. Writer and director Kelly Fremon Craig adapted Judy Blume's 1970 coming-of-age story about a pubescent girl and her daily adventures into a deft film that deals with a few of these overarching subjects. When I went to see it, I expected a modernized (i.e., sanitized) version of a very down-to-earth story, but was surprised to find that the picture embraces the trials and tribulations of its protagonist in the context of the early seventies, and doesn't attempt to update the material. This was wise; Judy Blume's novel is a bestseller because it's a good yarn, and good yarns shouldn't be tampered with.  Successful movies are always well cast, and "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." is cast perfectly. Rachel McAadams shines as Barbara Simon, mother of Abby Ryder Fortson's Margaret. The ageless Kathy Bates is convincing as g...
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PALE RIDER (1985) ★ ★ ★ ★

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Although he's all but retired now, Clint Eastwood remains the last of the twentieth century's iconic big-screen tough guys, surviving the likes of Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, James Coburn, Kirk Douglas, and James Caan. What all of these men had in common was the unshakeable presence and charisma of someone who isn't afraid of anything or anyone. But unique to Eastwood is his ability to convey menace without drawing a gun or flexing muscle. He gets his point across using only his eyes. His 1985 film, "Pale Rider," has just that sort of quintessential Eastwood moment. He's being verbally threatened by one of the heavies, in a scene where another man would've furrowed his brow and frowned to try to look appropriately pissed-off. Eastwood's character opts to obscure two-thirds of his face with a whiskey glass instead, which leaves the two burning coals of his eyes glowing from the darkness between the liquid below and the hat brim above. Th...
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STRANGE WORLD (2022) ★

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My metric for judging children's movies is simple: they should appeal to children. This seems like an easy standard, but I've noticed in recent children's films an unfortunate tendency to veer into storylines that are too complicated for a 42 year-old, let alone a grade schooler. Such is the case with Disney's latest animated fiasco, "Strange World," a film so overladen with political and eco-conscious themes that even the most hardened D.C. lobbyist would blanche at watching it. I won't summarize the storyline of this one, simply because I couldn't follow it. It has something to do with a family discovering an unlikely form of bioelectrical energy, which mysteriously loses its usefulness and needs a replacement. The adventure that follows is similar to Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, from which Disney's source material is taken. Nothing wrong with that in principle, but "Strange World" abuses Verne's 1864 scienc...
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AMBULANCE (2022) ★ ★

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"Ambulance" is director Michael Bay's remake of the 2005 Danish movie "Ambulancen," and a lesson on what not to do with a remake. Chris Fedak's wilting screenplay about two brothers who hijack an ambulance to escape a botched bank heist extends the original story's 80 minute runtime by fifty-six minutes, and it feels like an eternity.  Michael Bay needs no introduction. He is well known for classics like "Bad Boys" and "The Rock." He has a bombastic style full of quick cuts and big special effects, and it served him well in the nineties and 2000s. He pulls from the usual bag of tricks in this film, but somehow none of them work, and even stranger, none of them feel particularly Bay-ish. For example, he employs a drone camera for several sweeping shots, but they wind up looking like he strapped a lens to a flying pigeon. I got vertigo watching "Ambulance," and none of its scenes involve heights.  Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abd...
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THE HUNGER GAMES (TRILOGY RATING): ★ ★ ★

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I considered publishing separate reviews for each of the films in "The Hunger Games" trilogy, but decided against it when I realized that my reaction to all of them was essentially the same. I could go on and on about these movies, but instead I'll be uncharacteristically brief with one collective assessment. I should note that the first film rolled out in 2012, and the last one was released in 2015, although there is a fourth entry in the works that is expected to hit theaters next year.  The're based on the bestselling science fiction novels by Suzanne Collins. I've never read them, but if the movies are anything to go by, they're probably pretty good. In fact, they're probably better than their celluloid adaptations, which wouldn't be a big shocker. But the films aren't nearly as bad as they could have been, and that's saying something given that their casts are surprisingly lackluster and their prevailing mood is rather leaden and dark. I...
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GROSSE POINTE BLANK (1997) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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I have a long-held respect for John Cusack. He's more than an actor; it's clear from the roles he chooses and the projects he backs that he's a film buff. There's no other way to interpret a career than spans titles like "High Fidelity," "America's Sweethearts," and this 1997 gem from Hollywood Pictures. It was directed by George Armitage ("Miami Blues," "The Big Bounce"), produced by Susan Arnold, Donna Arkoff Roth, Roger Birnbaum, and written by Tom Jankiewicz, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, and Cusack, although Armitage has stories about the writing process. He says it was contentious, with several rewrites, tons of content rejection, and seemingly endless improvisation. Complicating matters further, he shot three versions of "Grosse Pointe Blank." There was the version written on paper. Then there was the "mildly understated" version, in which the cast was encouraged to tone everything down. Lastly, he f...
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DOCTOR SLEEP (2019) ★ ★ ★ ★

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As Halloween nears, I can't think of a better movie to review than "Doctor Sleep." It's the 2019 sequel to "The Shining" (1980), and it accomplishes something I didn't think was possible. However, there are two versions of this movie that differ from each other a bit, namely in how much screen time the cool Kubrick stuff gets at the end, so if you're a cinephile like me and want your money's worth, go for the Director's Cut. It's about a half hour longer, and it's a bit better than the theatrical release because it further fleshes out the story's main themes, and does them in a very specific (and special) setting. The Theatrical Cut is good though, still pretty long (152 minutes), and I think it flows well. I found it to be a worthy edit, and it reminded me that Kubrick's story also had two edits, one long and one short. In "Doctor Sleep," Ewan McGregor plays an adult Danny Torrance, a man haunted by the Overlook Hot...
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