Review: “On Chesil Beach”

3 out of 5 stars. “On Chesil Beach” is a 2007 novel (novella, really, as it comes in at under 200 pages) by celebrated author Ian McEwan that intimately examines the relationship between a young couple up to and including their wedding night. It does this so intimately, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine […]

Review: “Ocean’s 8”

3.5 out of 5 stars. There’s one moment in “Ocean’s 8” that calls out the necessity of an all-female reboot of the franchise, when Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) and her partner Lou (Cate Blanchett) are going over potential hires for their big heist. When Lou brings up a male candidate and Debbie immediately says no […]

Review: “Solo: A Star Wars Story”

3.5 out of 5 stars. “Solo: A Star Wars Story” isn’t the Star Wars movie we needed. It isn’t even the Star Wars movie that many people wanted. Behind-the-scenes troubles arose halfway through production, causing a good deal of apprehension as to how the final product would turn out, while even many die-hard fans seemed […]

Review: “Deadpool 2”

3.5 out of 5 stars. “Deadpool 2” was at risk of being too much of a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love “Deadpool,” the hilarious and gory R-rated adaptation of a fan favorite Marvel hero. It’s about as meta as it gets, and lampoons superhero movies- even it’s own movie- with hysterical […]

Review: “Avengers: Infinity War”

The following is a non-spoiler review of “Avengers: Infinity War.” 3 out of 5 stars. “Avengers: Infinity War” had a lot it needed to accomplish in the space of two and a half hours. But it also had a lot it needed to prove. That feels like a weird thing to say about the […]

Review: “Rampage”

1.5 out of 5 stars. “Rampage,” a new action movie directed by Brad Peyton and starring Dwayne Johnson, is based on a 1986 arcade game of the same name, a bit of trivia that I actually wasn’t familiar with going into the movie. But it makes sense to me now, as “Rampage” is so simplistic, […]

Review: “A Quiet Place”

4 out of 5 stars. It’s a long, long time into “A Quiet Place” before there’s any spoken dialogue—or any long, prolonged noise, for that matter. The horror film uses sound not just as a gimmick for its monster—which hunts its prey through sound—but to create tension, not just in terms of a family’s survival, […]

Review: “Isle of Dogs”

4 out of 5 stars. “Whatever happened to man’s best friend?” That’s the question posed by Professor Watanabe to Kobayashi—the cat-loving mayor of Megasaki City on the Japanese coast—just before he signs a decree requiring all the city’s dogs to be sent to the neighboring Trash Island in the wake of a dog flu virus […]

Review: “Ready Player One”

2.5 out of 5 stars. It’s one thing for a film to reference or pay homage to pop culture figures; it’s quite another thing for a film to entirely revolve around said references. In some cases, this has worked splendidly: 1988’s “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” is a modern classic in which iconic cartoon characters coexist […]

Review: “Pacific Rim Uprising”

1.5 out of 5 stars. Hey, do like watching giant monsters fight giant robots? Did you love the movie “Pacific Rim”? Then boy, is this not the movie for you. It’s like Godzilla, but it isn’t quite Godzilla. It’s also like Transformers, but it’s not quite Transformers. Its style is derived somewhat from Japanese anime, […]