Review: “The Lost City”

“The Lost City” isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but it is something we haven’t seen in quite a while: a big budget studio screwball comedy centering around big stars whose success hinges almost entirely on the talents of said stars. Sandra Bullock stars as Loretta Sage, a best-selling romance author who has become a […]

Review: “Free Guy”

Guy is not the kind of character you’d usually want to play in a shooter game. In fact, he’s not the kind of character you’d normally be able to play at all. Guy is a non-playable character, or NPC, a background figure created to populate a video game’s environment, whether to just provide atmosphere or […]

Streaming Movie Recap: August 2020, Part 1

Happy almost-fall, movie fans! The month of August started to see some changes for movies, with many theaters across the United States and in other countries reopening for the first time since they shut down in March. I don’t know if or when I will be returning to indoor movie theaters myself, and if you […]

Review: “The King of Staten Island”

It’s a credit to “The King of Staten Island” that it stars two comedians I’m personally not a fan of, and yet I still immensely enjoyed not only the film, but the characters they played. The new comedy/drama from writer/director Judd Apatow (who co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Sirus and star Pete Davidson) possesses some […]

Review: “Zombieland: Double Tap”

3 out of 5 stars. As far as post-apocalyptic zombie comedies go—and yes, I do believe that that is a genre in and of itself, thank you—it doesn’t get much better than “Zombieland.” The 2009 film directed by Ruben Fleischer takes place in an America that has been overrun by zombies, with the nerdy and […]

Review: “The Dead Don’t Die”

3 out of 5 stars. From the get-go, police officer Ronnie Peterson (played by Adam Driver), tells his colleagues—and the audience—that this story is going to end badly. The journey to that ending, however, is a light-hearted romp through the zombie apocalypse, told with writer and director Jim Jarmusch’s signature brand of deadpan humor, with […]

Review: “Late Night”

3.5 out of 5 stars. In “Late Night,” Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling both play women who defy those who underestimate. The film may be a workplace comedy—and a very funny one at that—but it has an important and timely message that reaches far deeper. The movie is directed by Nisha Ganatra from a script […]

Review: “Stan and Ollie”

4 out of 5 stars. Laurel and Hardy. Even those who haven’t seen their films likely at least know the names, and recognize their appearance: the tall and thin Stan Laurel, and the portly and mustached Oliver Hardy, bowler hats in hand. The comedy duo attained popularity with their short and feature length films for […]

Review: “Game Night”

3 out of 5 stars. We all know at least one of those people: the people who are freakishly good at trivia, who take even the silliest of board games way too seriously, and who are way too competitive at Monopoly. They are the people who love game night, but what if those people were […]

Review: “The Big Sick”

4.5 out of 5 stars. Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Boy loses girl. Girl falls into a coma. It sounds like a plot whipped up just for film, but it actually is the real-life love story of Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon—which they then turned into a screenplay for a […]