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 […]

Review: “Nine Days”

In “Nine Days”, writer and director Edson Oda ponders the meaning of life. Sounds pretentious, right? But although several scenes feel like they are deliberately engineered to extract an emotional response from the audience, from its unique world-building to its heartfelt performances, “Nine Days” holds up a mirror to all of life’s highs and lows […]

Review: “The Suicide Squad”

The DC Extended Universe got off to a rough start—so much so that over the last year, we’ve seen Warner Brothers attempt to course correct the DCEU, not by investing in bringing new characters and stories to life, but by tinkering with their past failures. This past spring saw the release of Zack Snyder’s four […]

Review: “John and the Hole”

“John and the Hole” may be billed as a psychological thriller, but it is above all else a fable. The film’s title card isn’t revealed until half an hour into the movie, by which time we’ve met 13-year-old John (Charlie Shotwell) and his family, but have also just been introduced to a unique framing device. […]

Streaming Movie Reviews

Happy August to all who celebrate! Today I’m recapping some direct-to-streaming films that were released in July, including one of the year’s best movies (“Summer of Soul”) and Netflix’s very fun horror trilogy event, “Fear Street.” You can find my capsule reviews of those movies and others down below! “SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE […]

Review: “Jungle Cruise”

I was in the audience at the Walt Disney Studios panel at the D23 Expo in 2019 when some of the first footage from “Jungle Cruise”—an adventure film based on the Disney Parks attraction of the same name—was premiered. But it was less the trailers themselves that made an impact, and more the surprising and […]

Review: “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain”

Director Morgan Neville has helmed some of the best documentaries in recent memory. Watching his 2018 film “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”—about children’s television personality Fred Rogers—was one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had in a movie theater. With his new film, Neville profiles the life and career of another TV icon: celebrity […]

Review: “The Green Knight”

My opening night screening of “The Green Knight” was an uncharacteristically crowded one for these pandemic times, and as I stood outside the theater for a few minutes afterward, listening to other audience members react to what we had just seen, I realized that it sounded like almost everyone had a similar response: that they […]

Review: “Snake Eyes”

Do you remember the “G.I. Joe” movies? I say movies, plural, because there were two of them—2009’s “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” and 2013’s “G.I. Joe: Retaliation“—although it has been so long since the films based on the line of Hasbro toys was released that I can’t imagine anyone but the most diehard fans […]

Review: “Old”

We all reckon with our mortality at some point—probably more often than is healthy, if we’re being honest. We spend so much time dwelling on where we’ll be in one year, five years, ten years, twenty. And age may just be a number, but the anxiety of that number changing is still ever-present. In his […]